LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 

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{ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, f 



THE 



PHILOSOPHY OF UNIVERSALIS!, 



OR, 



REASONS FOR OUR FAITH. 



BY 

Eev. I. D. WILLIAMSON D. D. 




CINCINNATI: 

WILLIAMSON & CANT WELL, 

STAR IN THE WEST OFFICE. 

1 8 6 6. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 18u6, by 
WILLIAMSON & CANTWELL, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Souther* 
District of Ohio. 



PREFACE. 



Philosophy treats of the causes and reasons of things, 
and it may be simple or profound. This little work is 
not intended for the learned student of philosophy, but 
for the people; and its object is to set forth some of the 
grounds and reasons for Universalism in a manner that 
shall meet the wants of the popular mind. The grow- 
ing liberality of the age furnishes no evidence that the 
battle of Universalism has been fought, so that there is 
no longer need of effort in this direction. On the con- 
trary, the masses of our people have not yet learned 
what Universalism is, much less do they understand the 
evidences in its favor. To give some light in this direc- 
tion, and place it in a form so condensed and cheap that 
it should be accessible to all, has been the object in pre- 
paring and publishing these pages. The author is 
encouraged by the generous reception accorded to his 
former writings, to hope that this little work may obtain 
a wide circulation, and that it may do something toward 
spreading abroad that system of Divine truth to whose 
interests his life has thus far been devoted. 

I. D. w. : 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Universalism of Keason 5 

CHAPTER II. 

The Universalism of Nature 18 

CHAPTER III. 

The Universalism of Experience , 29 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Universalism of Unity and Sympathy 40 

CHAPTER V. 

The Universalism of Cause and Effect 52 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Universalism of the Old Testament 63 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Universalism of the New Testament . 74 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Utility of Universalism 85 



CHAPTER I. 

0 

THE UNI VERS A LIS M OF REASON. 

The distinguishing feature of Universalism, that in- 
deed which gives the system its name, is the doctrine 
of the final salvation of the whole human family. This 
single doctrine, however, does not constitute the system 
of faith winch is known under the name of Universal- 
ism. It is the result of a system, which embraces all 
the means, methods and agencies by which that glori- 
ous end is achieved. Of course, it embraces much that 
is common to all versions of Christianity, and of which 
we do not intend to treat in this little work. We choose 
rather to confine ourselves mainly to that which is pe- 
culiar to Universalism, and explain briefly the reasons 
for it, not as against atheism or infidelity, but only as 
opposed to that form of Christianity which believes in 
God, Christ and immortality, and yet proclaims the end- 
less reign of evil, and announces a destiny for different 
portions of our race diverse as a heaven of eternal joy, 
and a hell of endless torments. Whether Universalism, 
in this aspect of it, is true or false, is a mere question 
of destiny. Its assertion is, that good shall triumph 
over evil, and the final result of the Divine Government 
shall be, that all souls shall arrive at a state of holiness 
and consequent happiness. This is the destiny which 
God has prepared for all His earthly children. It does 
not say when this shall be consummated, nor does it 
pretend to decide what periods of discipline and suffer- 
ing must elapse before this destiny is accomplished and 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF REASON. 



realized. It only affirms that this shall be the final re- 
sult. The question at issue is one that bears upon the 
highest interests of every human being, for it asks each 
individual man, What is your destiny, and what the des- 
tiny of the race to which you belong? If Universalism 
is true, the question is answered to the satisfaction and 
joy of the universe. If it is not true, no man can 
answer it satisfactorily, either for himself or others. 
Trusting that the vast importance of the question will 
commend it to the serious and candid attention of the 
reader, we proceed to its discussion as follows : 

Universalism has in its favor the clearest decisions of 
sound reason. 

Much has been said upon the subject of the office and 
province of reason in matters of religion, and there are 
two extremes into which the matter has been pushed. 
The first is that which calls upon men blindly and pas- 
sively to submit their reason to authority; denies the 
right of private judgment, and claims that men have no 
business to follow reason in the things of religion, and 
insists that it is their duty to believe, without doubt, 
whatever the Church, as the oracle of truth, is pleased 
to teach by authority. The second is that which de- 
nounces all authority, makes skepticism the normal 
condition of the soul, and faith to be indulged only so 
far as it is forced upon us by the decisions of our own 
reason, and culminates in the establishment of an intu- 
itional hierarchy, not less infallible than the Pope, thus 
proving that extremes do meet. The truth is probably 
somewhere between these extremes. There is, in re- 
ligion, a sphere and a function for authority; and there 
is also a sphere and a w r ork for reason ; and there is 
not, necessarily, antagonism betw r een the two. Both 
are legitimate, and both necessary. 



THE UNIVERSALIS! OF REASON. 



7 



Human reason is not omniscient, not infallible. Its 
survey is limited, and even in the field of its observa- 
tion it is liable to be deceived by appearances, and to 
err in judgment ; and there are thousands of cases, not 
only in religion, but in the ordinary affairs of life, in 
which, by the very necessities of our being, we are com- 
pelled to walk by faith, because we can not walk by 
sight. Take the following illustration : A man goes 
a voyage at sea. He does not understand the work- 
ing of a ship, and is not acquainted with the art and 
science of navigation. The necessities of the case re- 
quire that he should trust the skill of the navigator, 
and believe what he himself does not know on his 
authority. He is not to set up his reason as opposed to 
science, and insist that the ship is in longitude 60° west, 
and latitude 40° north, when the master says it is in 65° 
by 35°. That would be crucifying faith, and deifying 
one's own reason without cause. He is bound, as a rea- 
sonable man, in this case, to confess his ignorance, and 
rely upon the authority of his commander and naviga- 
tor. But this faith in authority is not to be blind and 
unreserved, nor is it to extend to all things. There are 
some things that the passenger knows as well as any 
man. He knows the polar star, and has gazed on it 
from childhood, as it has gleamed out from the night- 
sky. He knows it is in the north, and if in a clear 
night he should see that star shining out full and clear 
over the larboard beam, he would know that the course 
of the vessel was east. The captain and all his subor- 
dinates might insist never so positively that they were 
sailing due west, and he would not believe a word of it. 
Why? Simply because he has eyes as well as they, and 
he knows that the steadfast star, which has shone from 
the north through the ages, has not changed its position, 



8 



THE UNIVERSAL ISM OF REASON. 



and gone over to the south, so as to be seen at the left 
when he faces the west. The captain may say to him, 
" Sir, what do you know of navigation ? You are a 
landsman, and I have circumnavigated the globe, and 
it is your duty to rely upon my authority, and believe 
what I tell you." Indeed, that he should most gladly 
do in some things, but not in all. And he might well 
reply : " When I see you take your observation and 
make your reckoning, and find the latitude and longi- 
tude to be thus and so, though I know not the process, 
yet I believe on your authority, even if I have no means 
of proving its correctness. Bat now the case is differ- 
ent; the subject is not one of which I am ignorant. I 
know the premises as well as you. The heavens are all 
clear, and there is no mistake. Full on the left beams 
that polar star, and I know our course is east, and if 
all the navigators in the world were to tell me w® were 
standing w^est, I would not believe a word of it." 

Here we come to the precise distinction that should 
be noted between that which is above reason, and that 
which is contrary to reason. In the case of the latitude 
and longitude, the passenger was ignorant. He could 
not determine it. The problem was above him, and its 
solution inaccessible to his reason. It was necessary 
for him, in this case, to bow to authority, and believe 
on the authority of the navigator. But in the case of 
the course of the ship, he had all the means of judging. 
The question was fully within the province of his rea- 
son. The north star being over the left, the course of 
the ship was unmistakably east, and the assertion that 
they were sailing due west was not above reason, but 
positively contrary to it, and therefore not to be 
believed. 

Take an illustration from the domain of theology: 



THE UNI VERBALISM OF REASON. 



9 



The creed says : u The Father is God ; the Son is God ; 
and the Holy Ghost is God. Each of these is a sepa- 
rate and distinct person, and yet there are not three 
Gods, but one God." It is granted that this is an incom- 
prehensible mystery ; and it is claimed for it that being 
above reason, it must be received on authority; and we 
are not at liberty to submit it to the test of reason. 
We grant that if this doctrine be merely above reason, 
it may not be submitted to the testa of reason, except 
in so far as the validity of the authority on which it is 
announced is concerned. That is always an open ques- 
tion. But in point of fact the doctrine is not so much 
above reason as it is opposed to it. The statement that 
three are one, and one three, is simple enough in its 
terms. If we say, " the Father is God, and the Son is 
God, and the Holy Ghost is God," and then ask the 
child in the Sunday school, how many Gods there are, 
he will say three, of course. And if we say, " Xo, my 
son, there is only one God," we do but contradict what 
we have just told him. It is not a mystery that we 
propound ; it is an absurdity. It is not something above 
reason, but a plain and palpable contradiction that we 
propose. 

The sum of the whole matter, thus far, is, that rea- 
son is reliable in her legitimate sphere. Give her just 
premises, place her feet on the rock of eternal truth, 
and she will not lead us astray. What is above the 
grasp of reason may be received by faith, and believed 
on competent authority. What is contradictory of rea- 
son, is to be received never. When, therefore, Paul 
went to Corinth and reasoned in the synagogue every 
Sabbath, he appealed to a legitimate tribunal, and was 
able, no doubt, to show that Christianity was a reason- 
able religion. 



10 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF REASON. 



It has already been stated that the question involved is 
simply a question of destiny, and that we did not intend 
to argue it as opposed to those who deny God and im- 
mortality, but only as against those who deny a happy 
and glorious destiny for all our race. There are certain 
fundamental truths held alike by all who claim the 
Christian name, and if we would learn what are the de- 
cisions of reason as to the matter of destiny, we must 
plant our feet on these solid landmarks, and thence take 
our departure, noting our courses and distances, that we 
may be always sure of our position. 

" There is one God, who is the Creator, the Governor 
and the Preserver of the universe." This is the start- 
ing point in religion. Without this there is no religion. 
How far reason could go toward the discovery of this 
truth may be doubtful. We have long admired the 
masterly power with which the old Brahmins grappled 
this subject. They saw in the universe what every man 
who looks about him must see, a productive power at 
work, by which new forms of beings are constantly 
emerging from inactivity to life. This power they dei- 
fied, and called Brahma, the creator. They saw, also, 
a tenacity of life, a tendency to hold on and preserve 
the life and the form received. This they deified, and 
called Vishnu, the preserver. They saw, also, a con- 
stant tendency to decay and to change, by which forms 
were not only destroyed, but were changed, and suc- 
ceeded by others ; new life thus emerging from the ashes 
of the old ; and this power also they deified and called 
Siva, the destroyer, or transformer. Hence the Tri- 
mourti, or Trinity, of the Brahmins. Three gods, Brah- 
ma, Vishnu and Siva, but they did not violate rea- 
son by the assertion that these three were one; rather 
they said plainly these were three Gods. We can not 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF REASON. 



11 



say positively that it is possible for the unaided reason 
of man to push the process of thought further, and an- 
nounce the creating, the preserving and transforming 
power, as the attributes of one and the same God ; for 
we know not that it has ever been done. But we do 
say, that when once revelation announces this truth, 
though it may soar above reason, it does not contradict 
it Rather does reason recognize and acquiesce in the 
judgment thus pronounced. Be this as it may, the ex- 
istence of one God, the creator, preserver and upholder 
of the universe, is the fundamental truth of our holy 
religion, held sacred by all sects and all parties. 

As to the attributes of God, there is a like unity of 
opinion. All agree that God is a being of infinite power, 
wisdom and goodness. No error can enter into His ar- 
rangements, no lack of goodness can mar His purposes, 
no failure can defeat Him. Take these simple ideas of 
God, about which there neither is nor can be any dis- 
pute among Christians, and see what they teach in rea- 
son, in regard to the subject of destiny. 

The mere idea that God is one, is significant of des- 
tiny. Those who believe in many gods may be excused 
if they apportion our race among them, and assign to 
each god his share, and give to different portions of the 
race a destiny according to the character of the partic- 
ular god to whom they are presumed to belong. But 
the believer in one God, who is the creator of all ; a 
God in whose image all were made, and who sustains 
the same vital and essential relations to all, ought to be 
able to perceive that the simplest dictate of reason is, 
" One God, one destiny," and that he violates reason 
when he announces destinies wide asunder as heaven 
and hell, as proceeding from one and the same God. 
He makes effects the most opposite proceed from the 



12 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF REASON. 



same cause. He professes to find sweet waters and bit- 
ter flowing from the same fountain. He claims that 
grapes grow on thorns, and figs on thistles. He insists 
that out from the one fountain flows the streams of eter- 
nal life and death. The old Magi an s believed that 
the formula of the universe was one of perpetual con- 
flict between light and darkness, good and evil ; but 
they had too much philosophy, and understood the 
principles of reason too well to trace these opposites to 
one and the same fountain. Accordingly, they said 
there were two gods, one good and one evil; and on this 
they founded their idea of a long and dreary, though 
not an absolutely eternal destiny of evil for some. Had 
they known that there was one only God, and He was 
good, every man of them would have pronounced the 
logical consequence — " One God, one destiny " — beyond 
all doubt. The truth is, the oracles of reason are unmis- 
takable upon this point, and the utterance, "One God, 
one destiny," is so clear that all who proclaim diversity 
of destiny are compelled to multiply their gods. Mod- 
ern orthodoxy, so called, is only a nominal exception to 
this rule. ISTo man would venture his reputation in 
pointing to heaven, with its songs of joy, on the one 
hand, and to hell, with its groans and curses, on the 
other, and affirming that both these were the outbirth 
of the same fountain ; that the same God reigned in the 
one as the other. Hence, to hide the deformity of the 
idea, Satan is in a manner deified, and to him is assigned 
the dominion of hell. The logical consistency is at- 
tempted to be preserved by placing the formula thus : 
a One God and one destiny for all His children; one 
devil and one destiny for all his children ; " for reason 
is shocked at the thought of making the children even 
of one and the sume devil diverse in destiny. How 



THE UNIVERSALIS}! OF REASON. 



IB 



much more ought it to be shocked at the thought of 
making the creatures of one God diverse in destiny! 
The idea of one destiny is necessarily involved in the 
idea of one God ; the two must stand or fall together. 
The nature of the destiny will be in accordance with 
the character of the God. If the God be evil, it is folly 
to expect a good destiny ; and if the God be good, it is 
nonsense to proclaim an evil destiny as coming from 
him. Take the acknowledged attributes of God, and 
let the voice of reason decide that question of destiny. 

1. An infinitely good being must be presumed to pro- 
pose the highest possible good of his creatures, as the 
ultimate of their destiny. There is no conceivable mo- 
tive why such a being should create at all, except only 
that he might do good. The whole is greater than a 
part, and therefore the good of the whole is preferable 
to the good of the part. The good sought must be the 
highest good, or it can. not meet the demands of infinite 
goodness. If there is in destiny any possible, conceiv- 
able good higher or better for man than that which God 

I has proposed, then He has preferred a lesser to a greater 
good, and His goodness is not infinite. If, therefore, 
God is infinite in Goodness, it is evident that He seeks 
the highest possible good of all His creatures, and that 
end He will reach if He can. 

2. It is plain enough that a God of infinite wisdom 
could, if He were so disposed, devise a plan which, if 
carried into effect, would secure the highest good of all 
His creatures. Any error, any mistake involving a 
failure of the plan in any degree, would argue that the 

\ wisdom which devised it was not infinite. 

3. The third step in this reasoning is thus taken : 
Infinite power could execute the plan thus suggested by 
goodness and devised by wisdom; and the conclusion 



14 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF REASON. 



is, that so certain as God is infinite in goodness, wisdom 
and power, so certain it is that this plan has been de- 
vised and will be executed, and thus the highest possi- 
ble good is placed beyond all doubt as the destiny of 
the race. If it be not so, there can be but one of two 
reasons. It will be because God could not or would not 
do it. If we say He would not, we deny His infinite 
goodness ; if we say He could not, we deny His wisdom 
or power, or both. Choose your horn ! We do not pre- 
tend to any originality in this argument, except it 
may be in the mere mode of presentation. For more 
than thirty years we have been in the conflict between 
Universalism and its opposition. Times without num- 
ber we have seen this argument employed, but unto this 
day we have not seen or heard a respectable attempt to 
refute it or show its fallacy. 

We have thus stated the problem of destiny and its 
solution, as it stands connected with the character and 
the acknowledged attributes of God, and without refer- 
ence to the means and agencies by which it is to be ac- 
complished. In this last regard there are certain gen- 
eral principles on which Christians are well agreed, and 
these afford a basis on which reason can firmly stand 
and give her decisions with authority. 

It is agreed that God has set up a moral and spiritual 
kingdom in the world, and that Jesus is the messenger 
whom God has sent on an errand of salvation to our 
race. The old prophets speak of Him as the " Shiloh 
to whom the gathering of the people shall be;" the 
ruler "whose dominion shall be from sea to sea, and 
from the river to the ends of the earth ; " and "of the 
increase of whose government and peace there shall be 
no end." He is the conqueror who " shall swallow up 
death in victory/' and by whom God shall wipe away 



THE U N I V E RS A L ISM OF REASON. 



IS 



tears from all faces.' 7 He announces Himself as the 
Christ, the Savior of the world ; " and of Him it is said, 
11 He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His 
feet, and the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed, and 
God shall be all in all/' 

Here, then, is a magnificent enterprise which towers 
above all others; and accepting this as the statement 
of truth, as it is in Christ, the question between Uni- 
versalism and others becomes a mere question of the 
success, or the measure of success, that shall attend the 
efforts of the Savior for the salvation of the world ; and 
on this point it is that reason may be heard. It would 
seem that the mere statement of the question in this 
light is enough to carry with it the foregone conclusion 
to be assumed beyond all doubt or cavil, that the august 
and mighty power who has commenced this work, and 
ordained it in the hands of a faithful mediator, will 
carry it on to its completion, nor faint nor grow weary 
until the consummation shall coma. Success in the case 
is the first of all probabilities; failure the last of all 
possibilities. Yet, strange as it may appear, the world 
has ever been faithless and unbelieving, and the wise 
men in the church have claimed the right of assuming 
disaster and defeat, and a miserable failure as the prob- 
able result ; thus throwing the burden of proof upon 
those that assert success. But we venture to ask, by 
what rule do men thus claim to assume the foregone 
conclusion that the efforts of God in Christ for the sal- 
vation of the world shall prove a practical failure, ex- 
cept in the case of a remnant ? We insist that the pre- 
sumption of reason is precisely in the opposite direction ; 
so that without argument in the premises, triumph and 
complete success is the first and highest probability, 
and the idea of failure is only to be admitted when 



16 



THE UNI VERBALISM OF REASON. 



demonstrated beyond all doubt. If a wise master-builder 
with all requisite skill and an abundance of means, un- 
dertakes to erect a splendid temple, we have no business 
to assume beforehand that the end will be defeat and 
failure. On the contrary, the skill of the man and the 
means that are in his hands, authorize us to anticipate 
success, and that beyond doubt. And so of the case in 
hand. Were a messenger to come to the readers of this 
work, and for the first time state the case to them, there 
would be no difference of opinion among them. Let 
him put the case thus : " We are in a world of igno- 
rance, error, sin and death, where the tears often flow, 
and sorrows are many and severe. But I have good 
tidings for you. The great God does not intend this as 
our final state, but has set in order the means of our 
redemption. He has determined that He will remove 
the evil that is spread over all nations, and the face of 
the covering that is cast over all people, and reconcile 
the world unto Himself. He hath laid help upon one 
that is mighty, and commissioned Jesus as the agent of 
this work; and that He may carry it on to completion, 
hath endued Him with with 'all power in heaven and 
earth.' He has entered on this work. He has con- 
conquered death and risen from the tomb, leading cap- 
tivity captive, and henceforth lives forever in the pres- 
ence of God. And now what think you of the result?" 
Success! — complete and triumphant success — would be 
the response of every one, and there would be no 
dissenting voice. The response would rise up sponta- 
neously from the intuitions of reason, and struggle for 
utterance without the intervention of an argument or a 
syllogism. Even now, in spite of all creeds, beneath the 
crust of prejudice, and below the impenetrable mail of 
bigotry, down in the center of their souls, that response 



THE UNI VERS ALTSM OF REASON. 



17 



presses upon them and pleads for utterance ; and if 
they were to open their mouths to utter the thought 
that is uppermost in their minds, every one of them 
would say, "Success! success! to the Captain of our 
salvation, and to the work of God, is the only dictate 
of reason, and shame on the man that prophesies failure 
or defeat." If they consult polic}^, or creeds, or preju- 
dices, instead of the teachings of reason, they may see 
difficulties and raise doubts. Some may be afraid 
that the doctrine is too good to be true ; others may 
imagine that man's agency, and sin, and unbelief, and 
death are insuperable difficulties in the way of the ac- 
complishment of this great work. But if they consult 
reason, they will perceive that there can be no difficul- 
ties that God did not see, or that Christ did not under- 
stand from the beginning ; and in spite of them, all, the 
verdict of reason is success. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF NATURE. 

It is not pretended that the doctrine of universal sal- 
vation, in the form in which it is now held, could have 
been originally evolved from the teachings of nature. 
But our position is, that once being annnounced, nature 
confirms it, and to the man thus furnished w r ith the key 
of knowledge, her utterances are clear and distinct, in 
favor of a common and glorious destiny for all our race. 

There is an opinion extensively prevalent that wher- 
ever man has been left to the guidance of nature alone, 
he has arrived at the conclusion that the destiny of 
some will be happy, and that of others miserable. Such 
is not the fact. There is no doubt that the doctrine of 
endless misery, as the opposite of universal salvation, 
is of heathen origin, and was and is believed by those 
who know nothing of divine revelation. But the proof 
is overwhelming that instead of being evolved from 
nature by the sages of old, who taught the world in all 
the wisdom of man, it was invented by interested priests 
and rulers to hold the people in awe, and secure their 
own power over the ignorant masses of men. 

The oldest philosophy known on earth is that of the 
Brahmins, of India, and it may be truly said that the 
authors of it were not children, but men of gigantic 
powers ; men from whom Pla to himself probably learned 
not a few of the deepest and most profound lessons of 
his philosophy. And these men, guided by the light 
18 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF NATURE. 



19 



of nature alone, did arrive at the idea of a common 
destiny for all that live. They taught, indeed, that the 
souls of men after death would go through a long and 
dismal round of transmigration, extending perhaps 
through millions of years ; but in some far distant astro- 
nomical epoch all souls should arrive at Brahm, and 
rest in the bosom of the Infinite, whence they came. 

The next oldest system, probably, is that of the Ma- 
gians, of Persia, though the Chinese claim priority for 
that of Confucius. No children were these Persian 
Magi, nor was Zoroaster, the chief among them, a whit 
behind the mightiest intellects of earth. And these 
men, guided by the light of nature, did teach that 
although the conflict between the light and darkness, 
the good and evil, should be long and dreary, yet, in 
the end, the light should prevail, and inferior gods and 
men should alike be subdued, and dwell forever with 
Ormuzd in peace. It is not true, therefore, that those 
who have followed the light of nature alone, have ar- 
rived at the conclusion of a destiny the opposite of that 
announced by Universalism. But it is true that those 
mighty minds who taught away back in the ages, and 
whose teachings this day hold sway over more than 
one-half of our entire race, did dimly seethe glory that 
was to come, and did announce in the end a common 
destiny for man, and that destiny not of woe but of 
peace and rest. But this is not the precise question in 
hand. We need not ask what lessons were learned 
from nature, and in the ages of the past, by men who 
knew nothing of revelation. We live in the light of the 
nineteenth century, with the results of the researches 
of ages in our hands, and the light of divine revelation 
all around us, and the question with which we have to 
do is, what does nature teach us, as interpreted by the 



20 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF NATURE. 



means at our command ? Our position is, that it teaches 
a common and glorious destiny for our whole race. 
There is a world without us and a world within us. 
Let us interrogate both. 

The sun rises in the morning from the chambers of 
the east, and pursues his journey until the time of his 
going down in the west, and in all his unwearied course 
he sheds down his radiance alike upon the evil and 
the good. The clouds gather in the air, and pour out 
the refreshing rains upon the just and the unjust. 
The spring comes, and the earth is green and beau- 
tiful, and the breezes are redolent of the perfume of 
shrub and flower. Autumn comes, and the earth is 
ladened with fruit, and our storehouses are filled with 
food, and our hearts with gladness. The fountains are 
full of waters, which leap in cascades from the mount- 
ain sides, and wind in rivulets through the valleys, and 
increase to broad and deep rivers as they flow onward. 
For whom are all these things ? For whom does the 
sun shine, and for whom do the rains descend ? For 
whom does the earth bud and bring forth her treasures-? 
For whom do the breezes blow and the waters gush up 
from the fountains? Truth answers for all, and if these 
things are viewed simply as the arrangements of nature, 
the distinct and clear utterance is, that nature cares for 
all her children, and the indication is a common destiny 
for all w^ho thus share her kindness and her care. Every 
beam of light from the sun, and drop of rain from the 
clouds; every breeze that blows, and all the fruits 
of the earth, unite in forbidding the thought that the 
race thus one in the experiences of life is to be divided 
in destiny, or that a few favorites are to be blessed, and 
others to be eternally cursed. A common destiny for 
man is ? therefore, the distinct utterance of nature, and 



THE UNIVERSALIS^ OF NATURE. 



21 



there is not a right-minded man living who, if he were 
stripped of his preconceived opinions, would fail to re- 
cognize this utterance, and acknowledge the truth of 
this interpretation of nature. 

The French philosopher, Fourier, was certainly one 
of the most remarkable men of his age. We refer to 
him as a philosopher, which he was, and not as a theo- 
logian, which he was not. He calls himself, and in 
man}' things truly, a discoverer, and claimed to be an 
interpreter of nature. Among the prominent of what 
he terms the universal laws of nature, is that of " attrac- 
tion proportioned to destiny." He means by it that 
there is a law of attraction which draws all beings 
toward their appointed destiny — the end for which they 
were made. It appears in the instincts of the beast, 
which guide him with unerring certainty to the proper 
mode of life, and the destiny appointed him by the Cre- 
ator. It binds the fish to the water and the bird to the 
air. It attaches the dog to man, and the lion to the 
jungle; and by an unseen but irresistible impulse, 
draws ail inferior natures to the end for which they 
were made. Rising above the^ brute creation, this law 
of attraction binds the human race, as individuals and 
in the aggregate. By it the Ishmaelite is drawm to the 
sands of Zahara, where the tropical sun pours down his 
burning heat ; and the Inlander cleaves to the regions 
of the north, where the frosts are eternal. By it the 
negro is drawn to the dance under the spreading palm, 
and the Indian takes to the forest with his quiver and 
bow, as naturally as the duck to the water, or the rab- 
bit to his burrow. And so of individuals. Each man 
feels himself drawn by a mysterious impulse to that 
calling or mode of life for which he is best fitted, and 
succeeds best when he obeys that impulse. It is the 



22 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF NATURE. 



universal law of attraction ; and the rule is, " the higher 
the destiny the more potent the attraction ; " the attrac- 
tion being always the index of destiny. We have 
nothing to do with any theories that Fourier professed 
to build on this law, or his conclusions therefrom. But 
of the law itself, it may be said that he must be dull 
indeed who does not see in nature, and feel in the depths 
of his own being, that it is a reality. If this be so, 
then the teaching of nature is, that those who are one 
in their attractions are one in destiny. Take the fol- 
lowing as an illustration : In all animated nature, and 
through all the races of bird, beast, fish, insect, nature 
and attraction point to destiny. If we find an animal 
with strong wings and feathers, we know its destiny is 
to live in the air. If we find one with fins and gills, we 
know it is destined for the water. If we find one with 
legs and hoofs, it is destined for the land. If one has 
sharp claws and pointed teeth, its destiny is to live by 
its prey ; and so we might go on through all the various 
grades of animals, and we should find it true that na- 
ture and her attractions are the index to destiny. So 
true is this, that the scientific naturalist will take the 
ghastly skeletons of the dead of other ages and deter- 
mine by their very mold and form whether the animal 
lived in the air, on the land, or in the water. Further, 
let it be noted that there is no such thing on earth as a 
race of animals alike in nature and diverse in destiny. 
God never made a race of birds for the purpose of sun- 
dering it in twain, and compelling one-half to live in 
the air and the other in the water. He never made 
polar bears and clothed them with warm furs, for the 
purpose of dividing them between the equator and the 
poles. He never made a race of camels for the purposo 
of dividing them between Zahara and Greenland. But 



THE UNIVERSALIS}! OF NATURE. 



23 



He determines the destiny and fixes the habitation of 
each grade by the very nature and attractions that 
He gives them. With these facts in view, let us see 
what nature says about the destiny of man. 

1. Man is one in nature: "God has made of one blood 
all nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth." 
There may be varieties of color and complexion, and va- 
riations of form and features, as also degrees of capacity 
and strength of intellect. But, in all the essential ele- 
ments of their being, and in the fact that they are men, 
they are alike. One blood runs in all their veins, and a 
nerve of a common life unites them in one body. In this 
single fact the voice of nature proclaims a common des- 
tiny, as their portion, and protests against the thought 
that a race thus one in nature, is to be riven asunder and 
made diverse in destiny. There is no analogy for it, in 
all the universe; and it can not be so, unless the Creator 
has departed, in man's case, from a rule which runs 
through all grades of being unbroken, from the Behe- 
moth down to the insect that flits in the summer's 
breeze. 

2. Men are alike in their attractions. Not that there 
are no minor points in which men's attractions differ. 
But the idea is, that in the deep, pervading, and never- 
failing currents of their attractions, they are the same. 
The fact that the earth does not satisfy the yearnings 
of the spirit, is an indication that there is a spirit-home, 
an inheritance reserved for man in another world. That 
all men love life : that by the irrepressible laws of their 
being, they are attracted toward immortality, and yearn 
for it; that this attraction is common to the race, and 
runs unbroken from the highest to the lowest, is a truth 
that may not be disputed. What is the meaning of this 
fact? There is not, in ail nature, such a thing as an 



24 THE UNIVERSALIS!! OF NATURE. 

attraction toward that which is not, or what is the same, 
toward nothing. But as surely as anything animate 
or inanimate is attracted at all, there is something to 
attract. On the basis of this truth, attraction becomes 
the index of destiny; and this yearning for immortality, 
which stirs the souls of all that live, is but the voice of 
nature proclaiming one glorious destiny as the portion 
of the race. Nothing short of this can meet the wants 
of the case, or preserve the harmonies of nature. If 
the Creator had designed that the final destiny of some 
men should be to dwell in eternal burnings and others in 
the abodes of bliss, there is no such thing as accounting 
for the fact, that He has made them all of one blood, 
given them all the same powers of body and mind, 
stamped upon them the same nature, and subjected 
them to the same laws, and the same attractions and 
aspirations. Unity of nature is proof of unity of des- 
tiny. 

But the testimony of nature ends not here. There is 
a world without and a world within us; and that mys- 
terious world within us it is that marks the distinctive 
features of our nature. In the depths of that world 
there is a voice, which, if we will hear and believe it, 
becomes the sure word of prophesy. Not only is it 
true that men are attracted toward a blessed and happy 
immortality as their destiny, but so potent is this attrac- 
tion, that all men do believe that they shall attain it. In 
all human souls there is a presentiment, if such it may 
be called, of the final triumph of good over evil, of hap- 
piness over misery. Not that all men apprehend this in 
its application to all others. But what we affirm is, that 
in the deepest soul of every sane man, not absolutely in 
utter despair, there is a deep-seated and irrepressible 
conviction that, for Mm : and in his case, there is some- 



THE UNIVERSALIS^! OF NATURE. 



25 



where in the boundless future, a period of repose, where 
the woes that now assail him shall be done away, and 
he shall dwell in rest and peace. No matter what a 
man's creed may be. This conviction is mightier than 
a creed, and no power on earth can blot it out. It is 
well that it is so; for if in any case it is obliterated, de- 
spair and insanity come speedily. Xo man can live 
without it, and retain his reason. This presentiment, 
or intuition, this irrepressible hope, which each man 
cherishes tor himself, of a happy issue from all his 
conflicts and sufferings, is nature's own voice uttered in 
the world within us, and testifying to the truth of des- 
tiny, as proclaimed in the doctrine of universal salva- 
tion. So that every man hath the witness in himself; 
and if he will but listen to the pleading of his own 
nature, he will not fail of the truth. 

But nature speaks not only in its yearnings after a 
destiny in which the good triumphs over the evil; and 
in the avidity with which it lays hold of, and the tenac- 
ity with which it adheres to, the hope of that destiny; 
but, also, in the protest it utters against the contrary 
doctrine. Go to the mother, and tell her that her child 
is destined to become a demon in the land of unuttera- 
ble woe, and by all the strength of every fiber of a 
mother's heart she will protest against it, as violence 
done to the very nature that God has given her. Go 
into the great congregation where destiny, in the dark 
aspect of it, is proclaimed, and wrought up in its live- 
liest horrors by the charms of poetry and eloquence, 
and mark the uprising of man's nature against it. A 
whole congregation will be convulsed with the deepest 
feeling of fear, terror, sympathy, pity, or despair, as 
the case may be. Some tremble as an aspen leaf ; some 
shriek outright in their fright; some shed tears of sym- 



26 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF NATURE. 



pathy, and all are stirred to the -depths of their being. 
It is the voice of nature, uttered in its own unmistaka- 
ble language, and thundering its protest against the 
violence done to its first and highest attractions and 
principles. In the one case nature weeps as a grieved 
infant; and in another, she rouses herself as a lion from 
his lair, and is ready to tear and rend, the cause of the 
offense ; and, in all, she protests that her sanctuary is 
invaded by an enemy. The simple question, and the 
only one that need be asked is, Whether we are to be- 
lieve our own nature, God-made and heaven-impressed 
as it is, or the creeds of men? Is nature false and the 
creed true? Or, is nature true and the creed false? One 
thing is certain, and that is, a man must divest himself 
of all the finest and best sympathies and affections of 
his nature ; he must petrify his heart as adamant, so 
that it will not "feel for others' woes," ere he can believe 
in that view of destiny, and live in any tolerable degree 
of mental comfort. 

We recur again to that world which is without. It is 
admitted that men often err in their interpretations of 
nature, and attempts are often made to justify absurd and 
even contradictory views, by an appeal to the teachings 
of nature. When an infant cries, and thus employs the 
only means that God has given it to make known its 
wants, grave divines sometimes seize upon the crying of 
the child, as proof drawn from nature of the inherent 
depravity of man. So thunder and lightning, the means 
of purifying the air and replenishing the fountains of 
life, are sometimes regarded as proof from nature, of the 
anger of the Divinity. Happily we have in the teach- 
ings of Christ, many illustrations of His method of in- 
terpreting nature; for full, surely, no teacher ever ap- 
pealed more often than He did to nature around him. 



THE UNIVERSALIS^! OF NATURE. 



27 



A single instance shall illustrate the point in hand: 
" Behold the fowls of the air, they sow not, neither do 
they reap nor gather into barns. And yet your Heav- 
enly Father feedeth them. Consider the lillies of the 
field. They toil not, neither do they spin; yet, I say 
unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
like one of these." We have here a direct and palpable 
appeal to nature. He sat upon the mountain with His 
disciples, looking out upon nature around Him. The 
green carpet of the earth was under His feet, and the 
air was laden with the perfume of fruit and flower. 
The grass waved, and the grain bowed its golden head 
in the gentle breeze. The birds sailed in the air or 
sported among the branches of the trees, and sung for 
joy. To these the Great Teacher appealed ; and mark 
His interpretation of nature's voice. "Behold the fowls 
of the air; your Heavenly Father feedeth them, with- 
out care or forethought on their part. Consider the 
lillies of the field ; God clothes them in robes of beauty 
that Solomon knew not. Wherefore, if God so clothe 
the grass, that to-day is and to-morrow is cast into 
the oven, will He not clothe you, O! ye of little faith? 
Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall 
take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the 
day is the evil thereof." 

Here, then, we have the lesson of reliance upon the 
care and protection of God, of trust in Him, and cheer- 
ful and confiding hope for all the destinies of the future, 
drawn from the teachings of nature, and enforced upon 
His disciples by the Savior Himself. The demonstra- 
tion of nature was before them, that the Good Father 
cares and makes provisions for meaner things than man, 
and the exhortation is to rise from the inferior to the 
superior, and trust and believe that He who thus feeds 



28 



THE UNIVERSALIS]*! OF NATURE. 



the birds and clothes the lillies can not overlook man, 
whom He has made in his own image. This is the nat- 
ural and irresistible conclusion, that the unbiased mind 
must draw from a train of thought like this. 

If we start with the simple proposition that there is 
a God, who created and who governs the universe, and 
presides over its destinies, and then look out and see a 
little bird flj 7 ing in the air or singing among the trees, 
and remember that the Blessed God cares for that tiny 
bird, and will not permit it to fall unheeded to the 
ground, it is enough. Huge volumes could say no more. 
It settles the whole question of destiny. If God cares 
for that little bird, will He not take care of you? This 
is an appeal that no sophistry can evade, no argument 
meet. Every man, woman and child sees and feels the 
force of it, and would, if they could be true to their 
deepest convictions, confess the truth of the conclusion 
that presses upon them. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE UNIVERSALIS! OF EXPERIENCE. 

The proposition to which the present chapter is de- 
voted is, that all human experience indicates a common 
and glorious destiny for ail the human family. Of the 
legitimacy of the mode of argument employed, a few 
words may not be improper or unnecessary. Properly 
pursued, it is the famous inductive method inaugurated 
by Bacon, which has done more than anything else to 
clip the wings of fancy and bring philosophy down to 
the basis of science. Previous to his time, the scholas- 
tic logic of Aristotle was in vogue, and the dialecti- 
cians busied themselves with wearisome speculations 
and ingenious hypotheses. Bacon proposed to substi- 
tute facts for hypotheses, and induction for specula- 
tion. He would gather together and collate and arrange 
the facts as they are gathered from the evolutions of 
nature and experience ; and from these facts he would 
deduce the principles that pervaded them. On these 
principles he would rely to bridge the gulf that divides 
the known from the unknown. He would look upon 
the effects, and by careful generalization rise to the 
comprehension of causes, and thus reason from effects 
to causes, rather than from causes to effects. Whatever 
of mistakes or errors there may have been in his at- 
tempts to apply his system practicably, there can be no 
doubt that the system itself is most admirable, and it is 
praise enough to say that its introduction was an era in 



30 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF EXPERIENCE. 



the world of thought, and has wrought a radical change 
in philosophy, at least so far as its method is concerned. 

This is the method we must pursue in evolving des- 
tiny from experience. The history of human experi- 
ence is a history of facts, and inasmuch as these facts 
do not occur by chance or hap-hazard, there must be 
some laws and principles pervading them ; and when 
once these laws are discovered by induction from the 
facts themselves, they become solid landmarks of truth, 
speaking with uniform tones through all the experience 
of the past, and thus they may be assumed as a clear 
and unmistakable prophesy of the future. It may be 
remarked here, parenthetically, that though Bacon justly 
has the credit of propounding and explaining what is 
called the inductive method of reasoning, yet long be- 
fore Bacon lived, the Psalmist practically employed it. 
Indeed, it may be doubted if among all the philosophers 
a more admirable specimen of this can be found than 
we have in the Psalms of David, especially the one hun- 
dred and seventh. He begins with Abraham, and re- 
hearses the facts that appear in the experience of Israel, 
through Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Aaron — the experi- 
ence in Egypt, in the wilderness and the promised land, 
and through all the ages of the past. He points to na- 
ture, to the waters, the rains and fruitful fields, to the 
experience of men on the land and the sea, and from 
all this wide array of facts, deduces the great principle 
of the " loving kindness " of the Lord. That principle 
it is that spans the gulf between the known and the 
unknown, stretches onward through the boundless fu- 
ture, and affords a solid and substantial foundation of 
hope. 

Thus much by way of showing that the argument 
from experience is legitimate and authorized, not only 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF EXPERIENCE. 



31 



by the canons of philosophy, but by the usages of the 
inspired writers. Jesus himself uses it when He points 
to the facts that God feeds the birds and clothes the 
lillies of the field, and thence deduces a principle of 
goodness that will not fail to care for man. 

It is to be remembered, however, that this method of 
investigation is liable to be perverted and abused. It 
will not do to infer a general principle from a single 
fact, or a few isolated facts. The facts must be many ; 
the more the better; and only when they speak the 
same thing are we authorized to assume a general law 
as pervading them. Thus, the fact that one man dies, 
or ten thousand men die, would not warrant the pre- 
sumption that there is a law of mortality that embraces 
the race. But when it is seen that death has been a 
universal fact of human experience from Adam to the 
present day, then we may infer that mortality is the law 
which binds our race, and the fair induction is, that in 
the future, as in the past, all that are born must die. 

A most singular perversion of this method of reason- 
ing may be found in the domain of modern theology, 
which unhesitatingly determines the destiny of each 
man by a single isolated fact in his experience. Ask a 
modern theologian what is the probable destiny of any 
individual who died recently, and he will at once inquire 
how or in what state or condition he died. Did he be- 
lieve in Christ ? Did his faith hold out to the end? 
Was he resigned to the will of God and hopeful of 
heaven? If these questions can be answered in the 
affirmative, the decision will be that the man has prob- 
ably gone to heaven. But if not, the fear will be that 
his destiny is a miserable eternity in hell. Thus even 
the teachers of the church continually enact the most 
flagrant absurdity'upon which the sun ever shone — that 



32 



THE UNIVERSALIS^! OF EXPERIENCE. 



of determining a man's eternal destiny by an induction 
from a single fact in his experience. And yet it is quite 
probable that the very man who does this, will turn him 
round and tell us that we have no right to infer a glori- 
ous destiny for our race, from any amount of the facts 
of human experience ! Full surely we ought not com- 
mit the error of inferring thfct destiny from any single 
fact. But the whole history of our race is a record of 
the facts of human experience, and in a field so wide we 
can not fail to find facts enough to serve as the basis of a 
legitimate induction. We commence with some general 
features of this experience. We do not intend to argue 
the question of the age of the planet upon which we 
live, but we assume that some six thousand years, at 
least, have elapsed since man made his appearance upon 
the earth, and during all these revolving years genera- 
tion has succeeded generation in quick and rapid suc- 
cession, until the number of human beings that have 
lived is past all computation, and the field is too wide to 
survey except in its mere outline. Although experience 
is diversified, in some respects, and that of individuals 
varies in all shades and hues, yet in some points it is 
alike in all. There are experiences which are common 
to all. There has been no man born into the world, 
upon whom the glorious sun has not shone benignantly 
from the heavens ; and hence there has been no man 
who has not experienced the genial influence of the 
light and heat of the sun. True, they have not all felt 
it in the same decree, but in some £Ood and blessed 
measure all have received the boon, for " God maketh 
His sun to rise upon the evil and the good." The 
rains also have fallen upon all that have lived, and made 
the earth green and beautiful, that their storehouses 
might be filled with food, and their hearts with glad- 



THE UNIVERSALIS}! OF EXPERIENCE. 



33 



ness. Differences there may have been in the degrees 
of blessedness derived from this source, but the blessing 
has been upon all, for " God sendeth His rain upon the 
just and the unjust." So every human being has been 
permitted to breathe God's air. The quality of the air 
may not be precisely the same in all places, but God has 
poured it out, forty miles deep, over the whole earth, 
and plunged us into the midst of it, that it may move 
our heaving lungs, and blow in gentle breezes to cool 
the fevered i>row when faint and weary by the way. 
The water gushes up from myriad fountains, and no 
man has lived who has not experienced how blessed a 
thing is cool water to the thirsty. The earth also teems 
with food, and it is in the experience of all that the 
earth buds and brings forth that it may give seed to the 
sower and bread to the eater. Degrees there may be in 
the measure in which individuals may have been able 
at times to appropriate these blessings to their use, nev- 
ertheless, the great fact is, that " God opens His hand 
and satisfies the desire of every living thing;" and this 
truth is testified by the experience of our entire race 
for six thousand years. 

There is another fact of human experience from which 
there are no exceptions. Death has passed upon all 
men. The wise and the ignorant, the high and the low, 
the rich and the poor, the king and the slave, have all 
died. However different their conditions in life, they 
have been brought to one common level at last, and their 
earthly destiny has terminated in the same result. 
These are not isolated matters. There is no lack of 
facts here. The survey sweeps the circle of the ages, and 
gathers in its orbit the combined experience of all that 
have lived upon this orb of earth. There is unfolded 
here a law of unitv which authorizes the strong con- 
3 



34 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF EXPERIENCE. 



elusion that the destiny of 'our great race, whatever it 
may be, is one and indissoluble. There are millions on 
millions of human beings, endued with the same com- 
mon nature, who, during the lapse of six thousand years, 
have lived upon and shared the bounties of the same 
earth, freely given them of God. They have been 
warmed and cheered by the light of the same blessed 
sun; they have been refreshed by the same rains and 
dews ; they have drank from the same fountains the 
same sparkling waters; they have breathed the same 
air, and been fanned by the same breezes ; and at last 
they have laid them down together in the bosom of the 
same old mother earth. Thus far all their experiences 
prove that their destinies have been one, for together, 
and not alone, they have lived, and rejoiced, and suffered 
and died; and in the full confidence of truth it may be in- 
ferred that the assumption of a destiny in the future world 
diverse as heaven and hell, is a bare hypothesis, unwar- 
ranted and unauthorized by a single fact in human ex- 
perience. "We say nothing now of the nature or char- 
acter of the destiny that awaits our race. We only say 
that the concurrent testimony of all human experience 
since the world began, goes to prove that the destiny of 
the race, whatever it may be, is one and indissoluble. 
Let it be granted that there are inequalities in the con- 
dition of men in this world, in some respects. All do 
not stand precisely upon the same dead monotonous 
level. It would be a miserable world if they did. One 
is rich, another poor; one wise, and another simple ; 
and, comparatively speaking, one is good, and another 
bad. But however unequal they may be in some re- 
spects, there are no such inequalities as to invade prin- 
ciples, or to warrant the conclusion that the race is 
destined to be arbitrarily sundered and sent to two 



THE UNIVERSALIS^! OF EXPERIENCE. 



33 



worlds ; the one a world of pure unadulterated joy, and 
the other a world of unmingled and endless torment. 
This world is not so divided, and there is no fact of ex- 
perience from which the induction can be drawn, thai 
the future will be so. 

But there are other prophesies of destiny in the expe- 
rience of the past, more clear and explicit than these. 
Hitherto the course of humanity has been onward and 
upward. Eunning through all history, and pervading 
all the facts of human experience, from the beginning, 
there is a law of progress by which the waves of the 
centuries, as they have rolled, have mounted higher and 
higher, so that the course of humanity has not been 
downward, but upward ; and this single law, developed 
as it is, beyond a doubt, foreshadows a glorious destiny 
for the race. 

The thought and the illustration are not new; but it 
is well to contemplate man as we see him, in his first 
estate upon the earth, and contrast that estate with his 
present condition, that we may see how much has been 
gained, and what hope there is for the future. If any man 
doubts that much has already been gained, let him com- 
pare the half-naked savage, with his quiver and bow, 
seeking a precarious subsistence in the wilderness, with 
the enlightened man in the refinements of civilized life. 
Let him compare the hut, or the wigwam of the former, 
with the stately palace of the latter. Let him take the 
canoe of bark, paddled by an oar, and place it alongside 
the steamship, and he will see that a great stride in ad- 
vance has been made. Or, if we compare the ignorance 
of the one with the intelligence of the other, we shall see 
that the world does indeed move, and that the movement 
is onward and upward. Up from savagism and barbar- 
ism, humanity has advanced, until the air, the fire, the 



36 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF EXPERIENCE. 

water, the steam> and the lightning itself, acknowledge 
the sway of man ; and every step in this progress is a 
recorded fact, in the experience of our race, and may 
be regarded as a prophesy of destiny. Why should this 
law of progress, which has been at work through the 
ages of the past, be presumed to die out, and the world 
come to a dead pause, or face about, and go back where 
it came from? Can any man tell why? Surely, all ex- 
perience points in the opposite direction, and bids us 
hope, that a work so well begun will be carried on until 
it is consummated in a destiny as glorious as the be- 
ginning has been hopeful and auspicious. 2To matter 
though the movement may be slow. Enough it is to be 
sure it is onward; that the law is at work. The end 
can not be doubtful. Our argument is as follows: Be- 
cause experience, in the widest field of her observation, 
testifies to the fact of the existence and validity of this 
law; therefore experience is a pledge of a high and 
glorious destiny in the future. 

Again, it should be observed that the facts of human 
experience demonstrate that the ways of God in nature 
and providence are not destructive, but conservative; 
and this is significant of destiny. Amid all the changes 
of earth, and beneath all appearances of decay and de- 
struction, there is a conservative law that conies in to 
save, and to raise life even from the ruins of death. 
The seasons, how they come and go, and day and night, 
how they succeed each other with undeviating uniform- 
ity. The summer and the autumn, the winter and the 
spring come in their proper season, and each is iadened 
with its peculiar blessings. There is no night so long- 
that it is not succeeded by day; nor is there a winter 
so dreary that it is not followed by the beauties of the 
spring. The spring gradually prepares us for summer, 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF EXPERIENCE. 



37 



and the fruits of, autumn provide for the wants of win- 
ter. The waste of one season is compensated by the 
supplies of another, and so by virtue of this law of pre- 
servation the world is kept, as it were, ever new. And 
so it has been through the ages. The herb and the 
flower come up in the spring time, and grow, as they are 
watered by the dews and rains, and ripen as they bask 
in the genial rays of the sun. But there comes a frost, 
and they wither and die. All nature now assumes the 
garb of mourning, the appearance of decay and death. 
Men look out upon fields no longer green, and upon 
mountains that are hoar and bleak* The trees are leaf- 
less and bare, and the winter wind sighs through their 
naked branches. Man himself shivers in the cold blast. 
If we confine ourselves to these isolated facts, there will 
be no hope of redemption from this death; no founda- 
tion for confidence that life shall triumph over all this 
wreck and decay. But take a wider view. Wait the 
developments of the evolutions of nature, and soon we 
shall see that back of all these outward appearances of 
dissolution and decay, there is a great conservative law 
that comes in as a basis of hope. The seed falls into the 
ground, and though its form rot and die, its real life re- 
mains. The spring cometh, and a new creation rises 
from the ashes of the old, and thus the movement is on- 
ward and upward. Nothing is lost ; but all conspires to 
augment the amount of good, which the Blessed God 
communicates to the world and the creatures that He 
has made. Facts like these have a bearing upon the 
great problem of destiny, and may be applied to our 
hopes for the future. 

There is a phase of human life called death, and this 
is a fact of experience. 'T is but the winter of life; and 
if God reproduces the vegetable world and guards the 



35 



THE UNIVERSALIS]*! OF EXPERIENCE. 



fading flower from utter decay, and suffers not the spar- 
row to fall to the ground without His notice ; if the facts 
prove that He thus cares for that which is least, may 
we not thus rise from the inferior to the superior, and 
gather the flowers of hope from the graves of the loved 
and the lost, and look forward to a destiny at God's 
right hand? True, we do all change and fade as a leaf. 
There is many a fragile flower in human form that fades 
and dies ere yet its full beauty is developed. And even 
the strong man, who rejoices in his strength, is stripped 
of his earthly garments as the oak is despoiled of his 
leaves in autumn, for the irreversible law is, that all 
that are born must die. But, in the midst of these des- 
olations of death, God is forever the same, and by virtue 
of the fact that He reigns, there is a morning sun that 
shall rise upon the night of the tomb, a spring time of 
life that shall follow the winter of death. 

We have thus far treated of experience in its widest 
aspect, and as it regards the movements of the ages of 
the past. The individual experience of all those that 
now live upon the earth, is of the same general import. 
The mere fact that men love this world, and cling to it 
with so much of tenacity, is proof that its experiences 
have been well fraught with blessedness, so that, at least, 
the joy has triumphed over the pain. Men, indeed, 
sometimes complain of this world as a world of suffering 
and sorrow, and denounce it as a vale of tears; but it is 
worthy of notice that these grumblers love the world as 
well as others, and are no more ready or willing to leave 
it. In fact one great source of their trouble is that death 
is in the world, and they must leave it too soon for their 
wishes. But the man who candidly examines the book 
of his own experience, and remembers all of blessed- 
ness that has come upon him, will find that, although 



THE UNIVERSALIS^! OF EXPERIENCE. 



39 



there is an occasional page wet with tears, vet the body 
of the book is well filled with the record of blessings 
that have come richly upon him, and made his life a 
thing for which he has cause of abundant gratitude to 
the Giver of all good. And so the man who will take the 
trouble to look around him, will find that among those 
of his fellows with whom he meets, there is abundantly 
more of joy than sorrow, of pleasure than pain. All of 
us, in the course of our lives, see a thousand smiles for 
every tear that meets our eyes, and hear ten thousand 
voices of gladness for every wail of anguish that salutes 
our ears. 

Thus it is that all the experiences of every year and 
day, do testify that life itself is a transcendent boon, in 
the bestowment of which God has proved His abundant 
goodness, and authorize the hope, nay the undoubted 
belief, that the life to come, in which all Christians be- 
lieve, will be a blessing also. The indication is of a 
blessed and glorious destiny, We know of no single 
fact, in all the experience of the world, that countenances 
for a moment the thought that God will bestow a future 
life upon any soul, as an unmitigated curse ; or, that He 
will confer an immortality which shall bring nothing 
with it but suffering and misery. He has never done 
thus in all the past, and there is no reason to think that 
He will do it in all the boundless future. Sorrow and 
affliction there are in this world, without doubt. But 
these have their mission, and become, in their turn, the 
occasions and the sources of our highest and most re- 
fined enjoyments. Such a thing as evil for its own sake, 
evil not counter-balanced with corresponding good, 
there is not in this world, nor is there the remotest 
probability that there will be in the future. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 

The great French philosopher, to whom reference has 
already been made, propounds what he calls the "soli- 
darity" of the human race, and claims that the doctrine 
is an original discovery of his own. He means by it, 
that there are not only sympathies between men, so that 
they are affected by the joys and sorrows of others, but 
that the whole race is so compacted and solidified that 
it constitutes absolutely one body, of which each indi- 
vidual forms a part; and, by consequence, whatever in- 
juriously or otherwise affects any part, affects the whole, 
just as a diseased limb is felt through the whole physi- 
cal system. Hence he argues at great length, and with 
masterly skill and power, that all social systems built 
upon the principle of an antagonism of interests between 
man and man, and which seek to elevate one part at the 
expense of the other, are false and vicious. Unity of 
interest is the law that should be held sacred. What 
benefits one is a benefit to the race, and what injures 
one injures the race, for we are all members of the same 
body, and must suffer or prosper together. He argues 
that the different portions of men must advance or re- 
cede together, and progress must be in parallel lines. 
Thus, if one portion of a community becomes very rich, 
and another portion is left very poor, there is a schism in 
the body, and by virtue of the fact that both belong to 
the same body, there is a continuous struggle to meet on 
a middle ground between the two. The rich endeavor 
40 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 41 



to keep all they have got, and the poor to get all they 
can. The poor seek to pull the rich down, and the rich 
to keep the poor from climbing up, and the result of the 
conflict, in the long run, must be a compromise between 
the two on a line where the rights of both, as parts of 
a common humanity, shall be respected. The same is 
true of nations. If one nation regards only its own in- 
terests, and pursues them irrespective of the rights of 
others, it may advance with rapid strides, and place it- 
self far in advance of all others. But there is a penalty 
to be paid. The law of unity has been invaded. The 
poorer, the weaker and more ignorant who have been 
left behind become a millstone about the neck of those 
in advance. The conflict comes, and the result is, they 
must meet on a line of compromise, or the poorer and 
weaker must be destroyed, or otherwise the high and 
exhalted must fall and relapse into barbarism, as has 
frequently been the case. The cure for these evils is to 
be found in the recognition of the solidarity of the race, 
and in social and political systems which shall respect 
the rights of all, and looking upon all as parts of the 
same body, seek to promote their interests, and thus to 
advance together. 

With the ingenious and perhaps visionary theory, or 
rather plan, for the construction of society that Fourier 
builds upon this basis we have nothing to do, But there 
can be no doubt that the basis itself is firm and immov- 
able as Atlas. The wonder is, that Fourier himself 
should have claimed the knowledge of this principle as 
a discovery of his own, and that his admirers should 
have lauded him to the skies for having discovered that 
which is as old as Christianity. He did indeed display 
wonderful powders of mind, and great originality of 
thought in his efforts to apply this principle to the or- 



42 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 



gaiiic structure of human society, but beyond this he 
merely gave a new name to an old idea. No man can 
carefully read the twelfth chapter of Paul's first epistle 
to the Corinthians without finding all that Fourier meant 
by solidarity shining out clearly as the sun at noonday. 
And yet this epistle was written more than seventeen 
hundred years before Fourier was born ! He tells us 
here, " As the body is one and hath many members, and 
all members of that one body, being many, are one 
body, so also it is in Christ. For by one spirit we are 
all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gen- 
tiles, whether bond or free ; * * •* for the body is 
not one member but many." He then goes on to in- 
stance the hand, the foot, the eye and the ear, and other 
members of the body, as having different functions, but 
yet going to make up one body, and so compacted and 
solidified that when one member suffers, all the members 
suffer with it; and if one member be honored, all the 
members rejoice with it. The argument is, that in the 
same manner, we being many, are one, as contemplated 
in the teachings of Christ, and all necessarily partakers 
in the joys and sufferings of others. Fourier calls this 
" solidarity." It were as well to call it the "unity" of 
our race. This union and common sympathy of man 
with man, and of every man with his race, is a reason 
for the truth of a common destiny for all that live. 

In order to realize the full force of the argument, it 
is necessary not only to note the fact of this unity and 
common sympathy, but also to observe how wide and 
all-embracing it is. If one were to go into a family cir- 
cle, where father, mother, children, brothers and sisters, 
meet around the same hearthstone, and are bound to- 
gether by the ties of consanguinity and love, and say : 
here is one family whose interests are one ; they are 



TEE UNIVERSALIS]*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 43 



not only members of the same family, but are so essen- 
tially one that they must rejoice or suffer together ; so 
united are they in a bond of common sympathy that 
when one member suffers all the members suffer with 
it ; he would but utter a truth that is demonstrated by 
the observation and the experience of every day. Let 
one member of that family fall sick, and be racked and 
tortured with pain, and see what a cloud will come over 
that household! The father's heart will be touched, 
and the mother will bend over the sufferer, yearning 
with inexpressible tenderness, nor give sleep to her 
eyes in her absorbing sympathy with her child. The 
voices of gladness will be hushed and silent, and the 
lisping child will say, with quivering lip and tearful eye, 
" Brother, our sister, is sick." We ought not to think 
that this is a mere isolated fact in the experience of the 
world. It is the working and development of a great 
principle which sweeps the circuit of the race, and en- 
circles all that live upon the earth. iSTay more, it em- 
braces higher natures, and reaches onward and upward 
to heaven itself ; for the Lord has taught us that " there 
is joy among the angels when one sinner repenteth." 

If we go further than the mere family circle, and em- 
brace friends and those that we specially love, none will 
doubt that their interests and ours are in some measure 
identified, so that we must, in a degree, rejoice or suffer 
together. If friends are poor, or in distress, or sick and 
afflicted, we sympathize with them, and find ourselves 
partakers of their sufferings. If we proceed still fur- 
ther, and embrace the people of the same village, city 
or nation, it will be admitted that they have all some 
interests in common. An epidemic which falls upon 
many, affects all. A revulsion in business which pros- 
trates many, has an injurious effect upon all; and the 



44 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 



general rule is, that we are most prosperous when all 
around us are in prosperity. Generally, the more happy 
beings there are around us the happier we are, and the 
more of suffering there is about us the more we suffer, 
Nobody doubts this, so far as individuals are concerned. 
But when we advance another step, and aver that this 
principle embraces the entire race, and is as true of na- 
tions as individuals, that it is, in fact, a universal law, 
binding upon our entire humanity, many are disposed 
to doubt the truth of the statement. And yet one of 
these positions is no more true than the other. There 
was a time when the several States of our National 
"Union dwelt together in peace, and prospered as no na- 
tion ever before prospered; and it was true, then, that 
they all rejoiced together. Again, there was a time 
when they were torn by divisions and engaged in a 
bloody war, and then it was true that they all suffered 
together, and the tears fell in every village and hamlet, 
and on every hearthstone, through all the length and 
breadth of the land. Nor did it end here. A law had 
been violated which was wider in the sweep of its bind- 
ing force than a single nation or people. The nerve 
thus smitten vibrated through the body, and other na- 
tions felt the pain. The industrial interest of Europe 
felt the shock, and not a few of her toiling masses were 
reduced to the verge of starvation, by a war which was 
waged, not near them, but on the other side of the globe. 

And so, also, the armies and navies, and fortifications 
that are kept even in times of peace, and supported at 
vast expense, from the productive industry of the race, 
are but the tax levied upon all nations, because of the 
fact that they have interests in common with which 
they fear to trust each other. And so it is in all depart- 
ments of human society. The courts, and judges, and 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 45 



jurors, and sheriffs, and constables, and jails, and pris- 
ons, supported at such vast expense, to protect the life, 
liberty and property of the people, are the tax imposed 
upon them by the vices and crimes of those in whose wel- 
fare they vainly imagine the}?' have little or no interest. 
All these things go to prove that there is, indeed and in 
truth, a law of Unity, which runs unbroken from the 
highest to the lowest of our race, identifying the happi- 
ness and prosperity of one with the other, and making 
the interests of one the interests of all. Just as the 
human body thrills with pain, if a finger or a toe is 
probed, so the great body of the race suffers from an 
injury inflicted upon its humblest member. Borne by a 
thousand nerves, the pain will reach us in one form or 
another, even though the original injury was done to 
one who dwells on the other side of the ocean. A com- 
mon and glorious destiny may be fairly argued from 
this great law of human unity and common sympathy. 
To sunder the race, and sink one portion to endless and 
intolerable wretchedness, and raise the other to pure 
and unalloyed felicity is clearly impossible, because by 
all the strength of this law they must and will sympa- 
thize with each other. 

If it be said that some are happy and some miserable 
in this world, and, therefore, it may be so in the next, 
the answer is, none are perfectly happy or perfectly 
miserable here; and, in the next place, those who are 
comparatively happy here, do sympathize and suffer 
with those that are miserable; and there is an abate- 
ment from their happiness, caused by the sufferings of 
others. The only way to avoid the conclusion, is to 
sever this bond of sympathy, so that there shall be no 
feeling of interest in others; and this is to petrify the 
heart, and make it incapable either of pleasure or pain, 



40 THE UNIVERSALISM OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 



enjoyment or suffering. A heaven full of stoics, who 
had no sympathies with their fellows, no hearts to feel 
for others' woes, would be as devoid of happiness as if 
it were filled with a multitude of statues carved from 
marble or ice. So, then, one common destiny, and that 
a happy one, is the only hypothesis on which the idea 
of happiness for any can rest, and the only admissible 
conclusion from the law of sympathy and unity which 
pervades the race, and utters now and forever the fiat, 
"If one member suffers all the members suffer with it/' 

If we look further at this matter we shall see how 
clearly the idea of a common and glorious destiny flows 
out from the utter impossibility of the contrary hypoth- 
esis. Let it be remembered that we do not now argue 
the question of destiny as against skepticism, which 
denies a future life as the destiny of any portion of the 
race, but against those who admit immortality as the 
destiny of all; but hold that it will be, to some, an im- 
mortality of unmingled felicity, and to others one of 
utter wretchedness; and this, we affirm, is impossible, 
because of the fact of the law of unity and sympathy 
which pervades the whole human family. The follow- 
ing are some of the difficulties with which we shall 
meet if we maintain that this great family is thus to be 
divided in destiny: 

1. The division must be arbitrary, as will appear from 
the following illustration : Commence with the best man 
that we can find on the earth, and place him by himself; 
then select the next best man, and place him along side 
of the first; and by his side the next, and then the 
next; and so on until we come to the worst man living. 
It will be a long line, of course, and going downward 
from the best to the worst, or upward from the worst 
to the best, the ascent or descent will be gradual, and 



J! 



THE UNIVERSALIS}! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 47 



between the steps there will be but a shade of difference. 
The question is, where shall we draw the line of division 
and say, all on this side shall go to heaven, and all on 
that shall go to hell? If we say, "Here is the line, all 
on this side must go away into sufferings intolerable and 
endless, and all on that shall ascend to a scene of unin- 
terrupted felicity;" reason will whisper in our eir, that, 
between the two proximate individuals, there is but a 
shade of difference, and there is no reason why of two 
so near alike, one shall suffer and one enjoy eternally; 
and, therefore, the division is arbitrary, and in utter 
violation of all justice, all right. But, 

2. Allowing that an arbitrary division of this sort, 
though unjust, is possible, it is clearly impossible to break 
the chain of sympathy, which unites these sundered 
parts, so that the one shall not partake of the sufferings 
of the other. It is quite likely that this line of division 
may fall exactly between two brothers, and that ail 
along, every man on the one side shall have a brother 
on the other. Certainly they are all brethren of one 
race, but granted that the remorseless tyranny of an 
arbitrary despot might let fall the sentence of separa- 
tion between these brothers, who love one another with 
tenderest love, and send all on the one side down to the 
abyss of endless woe; yet there is one thing that can 
not be done. JSTothing can prevent the others from sym- 
pathizing with them, and suffering with them. Nothing 
can quiet that smitten nerve of sympathy which quivers 
for the woes of its kindred. No power can prevent, 
every loving soul of them, from crying, "Oh! that my 
head were w T aters, and mine eye a fountain of tears, that 
I might w T eep day and night for the woes of my breth- 
ren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." 'Nor can any- 
thing dry up the fountains of sympathy that are opened 



48 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 



in heaven, and prevent the " spirits of the just made per- 
fect" and the angels from weeping in pity. We may, in 
thought, fill hell with agony immortal, but in so doing we 
infallibly fill heaven with tears of sympathy, and there 
is no help for it. Behold the mother with her child, the 
dear image of those whom the Savior took in His arms 
and blessed, and said, " of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
Do we remember what a deathless fountain of love there 
is in that mother's heart, and how fondly she will cling to 
that child through life, whatever its course may be, and 
what bitter tears she will shed when it shall be plucked 
away by the hand of death? Does any man pretend to 
say that there is anything capable of so transforming 
that mother, that she can enjoy an ecstacy of perfect 
bliss by herself alone, or be indifferent to the sufferings 
of her child? Nay, in all God's universe, there is no 
heaven, there can be none, to the mother whose child is 
in hell. Lonely and desolate, the gold of the eternal city 
would be dust beneath her feet; and could she do it, she 
would leap from the battlements of highest heaven, and 
plunge to the depths of the nethermost hell, if there she 
might enjoy the poor privilege of mingling her tears 
with those of her child. And is it thus that men would 
sunder the ties of love, and outrage all human sympa- 
thies? The thing is simply and absolutely impossible, 
as connected with the idea of joy even in heaven. God 
has made us members of one body, and it was and is, 
and ever shall be the law, that "if one member suffers, 
1 all the members suffer with it." 

Let it be remembered that this love of man for man, 
which gives us an interest in the welfare of all that are 
of the same humanity; these kindly sympathies that 
lead us to rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with 
those that weep, are not the corruptions of human na- 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 49 

ture, but they are the holiest and best feelings of the 
heart. We are commanded to exercise them; to give 
them free course, that they may run and be glorified. 
The priest and the Levite, who passed by on the other 
side and left the wounded traveler to welter unaided in 
blood, by the wayside, were condemned, because they 
manifested no sympathy for the sufferings of a fellow- 
creature; but the Good Samaritan is approved, because 
he had a heart to feel and a hand to relieve. It was 
precisely this love, this broad sympathy for the poor, 
the sick, the lame, the halt and the blind, and for every 
kind and form of human suffering that distinguishes 
Jesus, and gives Him the pre-eminence in point of real 
worth over all others. This love of the heart, these 
kindly sympathies of the soul He came to nurture and 
cherish, and this nurture and culture is the great object 
of His religion. 

Precisely here is the defect of religious systems of the 
present age. They ignore this unity and common sym- 
pathy entirely. They do not seem to know that there 
is any law of nature or of God, to prevent one man from 
being perfectly blessed, though every other man were 
perfectly unblessed. They rive humanity asunder in 
the outset, and assume that it consists of two parts 
whose interests are so diverse, and whose sympathies 
are so completely obliterated, that the endless damna- 
tion of the one is nothing to the other. They will not 
allow that the one can or may sympathize with the 
other, or suffer on their account; nor that the endless 
sufferings of the one will abate one fraction from the 
joys of the other. The lack of logical consistency in 
these systems, and their violations of the principles of 
reason might be excused, would they leave man his love 
for his fellow-man. But this war upon that love which 
4 



50 THE UNIVERSALISM OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 

is the essence of all true religion; this attempted oblit- 
eration of the bond of sympathy, even from the heaven 
that is promised ; this persistence in preventing the 
saints in glory from feeling a throb of compassion, or 
shedding a tear over the inconceivable sufferings of 
myriads of their own race; this it is that marks these 
systems as the very antipodes of the Gospel of Christ, 
and proves them to be the offspring of the wisdom that 
is from beneath. 

On the other hand, it is the glory of TJniversalism, 
and one of the marks of its divine origin, that its spirit 
is the spirit of love, &nd it meets, as no other system 
meets, the wants of the soul in its deepest love, and in 
its broadest and most tender sympathies. Its utterance 
is, God has made us all members of one great body, so 
that our interests are now and ever one. He requires 
us to love one another, and to sympathise with one an- 
other in sorrow and in joy. It regards this love and these 
united sympathies as prophesies of destiny, and bids us 
indulge them freely and with full assurance that they 
shall not be outraged; but God himself will respect 
them. The mother may love her child without fear that 
her love will become a fountain of bitterness, in the fact 
that its object is doomed to hell. And so man may love 
his brother and have no fear that, by and by, his brother 
may be a demon in hell, and all his love for him wasted 
and lost, and worse than lost. If a man really believes 
in the common dogmas of the day, he can not love his 
children without being tortured with the thought, that 
they may one day be plucked away from me and con- 
signed to the tortures of the pit of despair. He can not 
love his race without suffering from the fear that half of 
them are doomed to an eternity of suffering without 
mitigation or relief; and the more he loves them, tho- 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF UNITY AND SYMPATHY. 51 

greater will be his anxiety and sorrow on their account. 
The worst of it is, that it is not the bad men, the hard- 
hearted and the unfeeling, who are tortured by this false 
theology. But it is the loving, the kind, and the sym- 
pathetic that are lacerated and made to bleed at every 
j)ore. But, believing in Universalism, one can love his 
children, and rejoice in the hope of glory and eternal 
union in the better land. He can love his race, and be 
cheered by hope for them, and the more he loves them 
the greater will be his joy on their account; and heaven 
itself will be all the more glorious, because of that sym- 
pathy which gives him an interest in the welfare of a 
great race that has been redeemed, and shall be blessed 
at God's right hand forever* and forevermore. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OP CAUSE AND EFFECT. 

The wise man gave utterance to no ephemeral phe- 
nomenon, but to a permanent and abiding law, when he 
said, " As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pur- 
sueth evil pursueth it to his own death/' It is not that 
life is a supplementary bounty bestowed " ab extra' 1 for 
the practice of righteousness, nor that death is an arbi- 
trary punishment threatened for the pursuit of evil. 
But God has so made man, and such are the nature and 
constitution of things, that by the operation of uniform 
and undeviating laws, the legitimate tendency of right- 
eousness is unto life, on the one hand, and on the other, 
the pursuit of evil involves death as its legitimate re- 
sult. Of course, then, there can be no such thing as an 
endless pursuit of evil, for the simple reason that such 
pursuit is sure to be cut short by death ; not death arbi- 
trarily imposed, or as a universal fact of human experi- 
ence, but death invoked and involved in the evil pursued. 
So, on the other hand, there can be no failure in the 
pursuit of life, for the reason that the life itself is in- 
volved in the pursuit. Eighteousness embraces what- 
ever is good, and we will substitute the term good for it, 
i as making the antithesis more perfect. Good tends to 
life, evil to death, and we argue the final triumph of 
good over evil from the truth that good is self-perpetu- 
ating and immortal, while evil is suicidal. There is in 
the one an inherent and self-perpetuating immortality, 
by virtue of which it shall live while God lives ; and in 
52 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 53 

the other there are seeds of dissolution, and it requires 
no more than the working of its own elements to insure 
its destruction. 

In the first place, this principle is clearly and unmis- 
takably indicated in the physical universe. The out- 
line of it is impressed upon the heavens and the earth. 
There is a great and most wonderful universe around 
us in the regions of space. The sun is the center of a 
system, and its vast body is as large as a million of 
worlds like ours. The earth, " self-balanced on her center 
hung," moves around it in an orbit some two hundred 
millions of miles in diameter. Nearer the sun, and 
within the circle of the earth's orbit, are other planets, 
and beyond us still others, stretching out to distances 
inconceivable, until Uranus and Neptune sweep along 
their vast circles, whose measure, as compared with that 
of the earth, is as the circuit of the earth compared to 
a wheel upon a coach. This is the solar system, and 
beyond this there are other suns and other systems peo- 
pling the immensity of space, and countless orbs moving 
in the paths marked by the finger of the Almighty, and 
obedient to the fiat which said, " Thus far shalt thou go, 
and no further." Regularity, uniformity, harmony and 
undisturbed order pervade these myriad worlds in all 
their movements. Who does not see that this order, 
regularity and harmony are the very sources of their 
safety and perpetuity ? This obedience to the laws, im- 
pressed upon the worlds by the Creator, tends to their 
life and preserves them through the ages. Occasionally 
there may be a slight perturbation, and some of these 
worlds may be caused to deviate slightly from the line 
of their orbits by the attraction of other planets, but 
beneath this there is a conservative law, and they move 
on, and with infallible certainty accomplish their courses 



54 THE UNIVERSALISM OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 



in due season. God saw them at the first, and in the 
judgment of infinite wisdom pronounced them good, 
yea, very good, and the good that is in them has tended 
to life, and has preserved them. So long as they remain < 
as they are, and move as they have moved, their perpe- 
tuity is certain, and the mere fact that God has made 
them subject to the laws of attraction and movement, is 
the proof that they are self-perpetuating, and in no 
danger of dissolution. But let us imagine now a dis- 
turbing force, negative or positive, and how soon would 
this goodly frame of things be changed ! Suspend the 
law of gravitation, so that there shall be no attraction 
toward the sun, and at once every planet would slip 
from its orbit and go off in a tangent, to wander law- 
less through the skies, to be dashed in pieces on other 
planets, or swallowed up in the vortex of other suns. 
Suspend or abrogate the centrifugal force, so that there 
shall be no tendency to fly off from the sun, and down 
would go every planet into the sun. Let this disorder 
become universal in all worlds, and what a wreck of 
matter and crush of worlds would come ! But this state 
of things must of necessity .be short. The evil would 
kill itself; the warring worlds would crush and shatter 
one another, and broken up into a chaotic mass, if there 
were left one law in the universe, all matter would 
arrange itself under that law, and order would come 
again with the infallibility of fate. The endless con- 
tinuance of the evil is simply impossible, for the reason 
that it would destroy itself. So, then, it is true that, 
even in the material universe, good is immortal and 
self-perpetuating, and evil is suicidal or self-destructive, 
and doomed to die. 

Take another illustration: The earth hath need of 
sunshine and rain, and these are supplied by natural 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 55 



laws. Every morning the sun rises and pursues his 
journey through the skies, giving light and heat to the 
earth. And when the surface of the ground becomes | 
dry, the clouds come over the face of the sky, and pour 
down the refreshing rains to make the earth green and 
beautiful, and thus God giveth the " early and the lat- 
ter rain," so that our storehouses are filled with food, 
and our hearts with gladness. No one can doubt that 
these arrangements of Divine Providence are beneficent 
and good ; nor can it be questioned that these alterna- 
tions of sunshine and rain tend to life. Their mission 
is to perpetuate and not to destroy, and working in har- 
mony, there is no danger of their failure. They are the 
sources of safety and not of danger, and they may w^ork 
through the ages without wearing out or coming to an 
end. But it is not so on the other hand. It sometimes 
happens, indeed, that there is a violent storm, a tern 
pest, or a tornado, but neither of them is self-peimetua- 
ting. Such are the laws of nature that a tempest or 
tornado must of necessity be limited in extent and short 
in duration. They make war upon themselves, and 
must infallibly destroy themselves. We need not go 
into an explanation of the philosophy of the matter. 
It is enough to state the fact, known to all well-informed 
philosophers and accurate observers, that the extent and 
duration of a storm are measured by its violence, the 
rule being, the greater the violence the less the extent 
and duration. A gentle breeze may blow and small 
rain fall over a large territory for a week. A strong 
gale and copious rain may prevail over a considerable 
tract of country for a day or two. But a genuine tor- 
nado, which sweeps all before it, and leaves nothing but 
desolation behind it, can not exceed a mile in width, or 
endure an hour. Generally speaking, they are less than 



56 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 



half a mile in width, and their violence is spent in less 
than ten minutes. The philosophy of it were easily ex- 
plained, but that would occupy too much space in these 
pages, and we give merely the statement of the fact, 
that the most violent and destructive storms are of 
small extent and brief duration, their very violence con- 
fining them, and working their destruction ; so that, 
like all evils, they are suicidal. The normal condition 
and undisturbed action of the elements tend to life, and 
to a perpetuation of the needful alternations of sunshine 
and rain ; but disturbing forces, in their effects, react 
upon themselves, and work their own destruction. 
Sometimes, also, there is a dearth or famine ; but it is 
always confined to a small territory, and is of short du- 
ration. While it lasts, the old mother earth is, as it 
were, resting and recuperating her exhausted energies, 
so that she may bring forth more abundantly; so that 
the very famine furnishes the means and opportunity 
for its own destruction. Greedy men may tax the 
ground beyond its capacity, and rob the earth by taking 
everything off and putting nothing on ; but the inani- 
mate earth will resent the robbery and put an end to it 
by refusing to yield her increase. On the other hand, 
it is true that generous culture tends to life, and to per- 
petuate the fruitfulness of the earth. 

Another remarkable illustration of this law of pre- 
servation of good, through the destructive tendency of 
evil, may be found in Professor Espy's Philosophy of 
Eain, which we take to be as clearly demonstrable as 
the law of gravitation. It is briefly this, that rain is 
always produced by the ascent of heated air into the 
colder regions above, where the moisture it contains is 
condensed by cold, and falls in drops of water. It fol- 
lows, then, that any cause which sends up from near the 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 57 

surface of the earth large quantities of heated air tends 
to produce rain. Fire, when it breaks loose, is a most 
destructive element. But it can not rage long, for two 
reasons : the first is, that it consumes the substance on 
which it preys, and must sooner or later go out for want 
of fuel, and the more vehemently it rages the sooner it 
must go out from this cause. And the second reason is, 
that it heats the air, and the heated air rises, because it 
becomes lighter than the surrounding air; and, thus, 
the fire sends up the material of which rain is made; 
and invokes the waters from above to come down and 
put it out. A great fire tends always to produce rain. 
It is not maintained that a great fire always produces 
rain, and in justice to the memory of a great and good 
man, now dead, it should be stated that Professor Espy 
never affirmed that much. But what he taught, and 
what is true, beyond all question, is, that rain is pro- 
duced by the condensation of the vapor in heated air, 
which rises from the lower to the higher and colder 
regions. A great fire sends up this heated air, and thus 
tends to produce rain. But whether in a given instance 
it shall actually produce it, depends upon other circum- 
stances not always present, and which need not now be 
explained. The fact is, great fires do sometimes produce 
rain and sometimes they do not, because the circum- 
stances under which they occur are not favorable to 
that result. Often it happens that the fires which sweep 
over the broad prairies of the West, are actually put out 
by the rain that they produce; but sometimes they burn 
until they go out for want of fuel. In either case they 
are self-destructive and do go out; so that they are of 
short duration. But it seems a remarkable illustration 
of the principle that preserves the good and destroys 
the evil } that the most dangerous and devouring of the 



58 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 



elements when it breaks loose, and rages with most ve- 
hement heat, should all the more send up the material 
from which, in God's great laboratory, the rains are 
made; and thus tempt the waters to come down and put 
it out. Thus suicidal is evil in all its forms. But the 
fire, under control and subject to law, is a great good, 
and in that form it tends to life. It warms the blood 
and moves the lungs. It melts the ore, and causes it to 
be molded into forms of beauty and utility. It smites 
with the ponderous hammer, causes the mighty engine 
to creak, fills the lungs of the iron horse, and sends him 
forth with the speed of the wind ; and, in short, aug- 
ments power, and gives life, activity and energy to the 
industry of the world. This it is that tends to life, and 
in this the fire itself is not destructive but conservative. 

One more illustration must suffice on this head. The 
human body is a machine, curiously and wonderfully 
made. Its normal condition is that of health. The 
exercise of all its powers and faculties in the right di- 
rection tends to life, and the influence is conservative. 
In fact, the preponderance is in favor of health, and ease 
over sickness and pain. Nobody imagines that there is 
any danger from a healthful condition of the body. 
Nobody fears that good health will make war upon 
itself, and produce sickness or death. It tendeth to life ; 
but when a disturbing force comes in and breaks up the 
laws of health, and men become sick, then comes danger; 
and that condition of things can not continue long. Fe- 
ver can not always boil the blood, nor pain rend the 
nerves, because the tendency is destructive, and soon 
death, if nothing short of death, is sure to kill the fever 
and destroy the pain ; so that, in this form, the endless 
perpetuity of the evil is simply and utterly impossible. 
And so it is that good lives and evil dies. 



THE UNIVERSALIS^! OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 59 



In the moral and spiritual domain of God this prin- 
ciple obtains. It is customary for men in these days to 
speak of the moral world as a scene of uproar and confu- 
sion, in which evil is predominant and triumphant, and to 
invest evil with a self-perpetuating power, which gives 
it immortality. Hence, prophets of evil are many, who 
proclaim in the name of the Lord, as they say, that the 
moral world is waxing worse and worse; the evil is 
progressing and prevailing, and the little good there is 
left is fast dying out; and they fear that it will die out 
entirely, and are certain that evil is at least co-eternal, 
if not more than co-extensive with good. We have no 
faith in this somber view of things, and, therefore, we 
propose to show that the triumph of moral good over 
all evil rests upon no temporary expedient or isolated 
facts, but upon broad and universal principle, that good 
tendeth to life, and is immortal; while evil is tending to 
death and is self-destructive, and must die, if by no 
other means, yet full surely by its own hand. 

If we go into a family where the parents love the chil- 
dren, and children love the parents and one another, and 
where, in fact, the law of love is observed in all the inter- 
course of one with another, we clo not see anything there 
that indicates decay to that family. Let them love on 
and practice their love; let harmony, and truth, and 
kindness prevail more and more, and the more stable 
will be the foundations of that house, and the greater 
will be the assurance of perpetuity and life. But let 
evil approach, and the law of hatred come in and usurp 
the place of the law of love. Let strife and contention 
take the place of harmony and peace. Let the husband 
cease to love the wife, and the wife the husband, and the 
children hate the parents and one another. It needs 
not a prophet, or the son of a prophet, to predict that 



60 THE UNIVERSALISM OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 

this state of things can not last long, or that the down- 
fall of that family is at hand, and the strife must end ; 
if in no other way, yet surely in rending the family in 
fragments, and scattering its members abroad. And so 
in community at large. Let the law of love be observed. 
Let righteousness, truth and justice prevail in all the 
intercourse of man with man. Let the counting-room 
and the warehouse, and the workshop be temples of 
truth, and let honesty and integrity enter into all the 
marts of business and halls of legislation, and how firm 
a foundation will thus be laid for long-continued pros- 
perity and peace! All these do tend to life. But 
reverse the picture, and see if moral evils can thus per- 
petuate themselves. It is said that vice is contagious, 
and has power to reproduce itself; but that is true only 
in a limited extent. Intemperance, for instance, may 
produce intemperance, but the proselytes made are not 
all soldiers in the army of intemperance; but when 
multiplied greatly they make war upon the cause they 
espouse, so that the loathsome drunkard in the gutter 
becomes an eloquent advocate of temperance, and speaks 
with a warning voice to every passer by to avoid the 
cause of such degradation and ruin. Keduce it to uni- 
versal practice, so that every man, woman and child 
shall become a drunkard, and the burden will be so 
great that it can not be borne, and the people would be 
absolutely compelled to be sober or die. So, then, in- 
temperance is weakened rather than strengthened, when 
reduced to universal practice. So, also, theft may pre- 
vail, and to some extent reproduce itself. But every 
thief is not a soldier battling for theft. When it extends 
so that thief preys upon thief, the sin begins to make 
war upon itself, and to reduce it to universal practice, 
would insure its overthrow. Suppose every man in the 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 61 

United States were to turn thief and robber. No man 
can sleep in his house without being* in imminent peril 
of having it broken and pillaged ; and none can walk 
abroad without being assailed and robbed. Theft and 
robbery prowl at every corner, and none are safe for a 
moment. How long would that state of things con- 
tinue? Not one year. The evil would be felt to be so 
enormous that it could not be endured; and the mere 
instinct of self-preservation would compel the people to 
band together and rise in the majesty of their power to 
put down the accursed thing that pressed upon them, 
well nigh to the crushing out of all their life. So indis- 
pensable are truth and honesty to human society, that 
thieves and robbers are absolutely compelled to practice 
them with one another. They can not live without them. 
But if righteousness reproduces itself, its cause is thereby 
strengthened. If we make an honest man we make a 
friend of honesty, and he will do us good, and the more 
we make the better it is for us. But if we make a thief 
we make an enemy, and he will rob us; and, then, we 
shall curse robbery. And when it turns out that some 
one robs him, he, too, will curse robbery; and by and 
by the two will join hands and try to put a stop to rob- 
bery. And thus it appears that the evil we seek to 
propagate makes war upon itself, and reduced, to uni- 
versal practice, must infallibly destroy itself. Hence, 
again, the endless perpetuity of evil is simply impossi- 
ble. Conjure up a hell, in the future world, as bad as 
can be imagined, where all the powers of evil shall have 
full scope, and it must be a short-lived affair, for it 
would annihilate itself if left to itself, for evil tendeth 
to death. But good is immortal; its tendency is to life, 
and it shall live forever. 

See, then, how firm a foundation of hope is here laid 



62 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 

for the final triumph of good over all that bears the 
form of evil, in the fact that, by the enactment of the 
Creator, the tendency of the one is to live and of the 
other to die, and that consummation shall surely be 
reached. God himself is good, and the fixed principle 
of His government is to do good and perpetuate good. 
Sin may abound for a season. The powers of evil may 
muster all their forces, and gather up all their strength 
for the battle against the good and the true. It may 
conquer for the time being, and "whelm nations in 
blood and wrap cities in fire," and deluge the earth in 
crimes of a crimson dye. But these are phases that ap- 
pear upon the surface of things. High above them all 
sits the ever-blessed God of goodness, upon His throne 
of thrones ; and deep down below the surface of the 
agitated waters runs the eternal law of His enactment, 
proclaiming the destiny of good to live and of evil to 
die ; the one immortal, the other doomed to destruction. 
Then let the battle rage, and in the midst of its fiercest 
strife, we may possess our souls in patience, for the good 
can not die; but life immortal shall rise from the ruins 
of death, and God, the only good, shall be all in all. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

The Apostle Peter characterizes the doctrine of the 
" Restitution of all Things" as that which " God had spo- 
ken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the 
world began." The New Testament was not then writ- 
ten, and the allusion is doubtless to the old prophets 
and sages whose teachings are recorded in the Old Tes- 
tament. The present chapter is, therefore, devoted to a 
consideration of the Universalism of the ancient scrip- 
tures. Let it be understood, in the outset, that we have 
but little confidence in the prevailing method of proving 
doctrines by mere textual expositions of certain pas- 
sages. The doctrines of the Bible are taught rather in 
great principles than in the mere formula of words, and 
we are always suspicious of any doctrine that can only 
be made out by a mere construction of terms and phrases. 
On that basis the controversy can never be ended. Only 
when we fall back on first or general principles can we 
find a solid landmark by which we can stand. Take, 
for example, the doctrine of endless punishment. There 
is no principle upon which that doctrine can be justified, 
except it be the principle of retaliation, or evil for evil. 
That principle does not belong to the Divine govern- 
ment, and therefore the doctrine can not be justified on 
that basis. What, then, is the resort of its advocates ? 
Simply to a few, a very few words and phrases. u These 
shall go away into everlasting punishment." Those 
that blaspheme against the Holy Ghost " shall be in 
63 



64 THE UNI VERBALISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

danger of eternal damnation." These two passages, 
and a few others, constitute to-day the foundation of 
the doctrine of endless misery, and the argument rests 
upon the inere force of that word everlasting, which 
happens, once in all the Bible, to be used in connection 
with the word punishment. 

It avails not to show, as has been done by TTniversal- 
ists from the time of Clemens Alexandrinus, in the third 
century, to the present day, that the word is used all 
along in the Scriptures in a limited sense, and applied 
to things that do end, and, therefore, the fact that it is 
applied to punishment does not prove it to be endless. 
It is of no use, the opponent will plunge into the Greek, 
and tell us that the same word is applied to the life of 
the righteous, and on the mere force of that one word 
will continue to denounce endless woe upon his fellows, 
just as if the Father of all mercies and the God of all 
goodness will forsake the fixed and immutable princi- 
ples of His government, and become the endless and 
merciless tormentor of His own creatures ; and that 
earth-desolating, heaven-depopulating and hell-perpet- 
uating fact can be legitimately proved by a criticism 
upon a single Greek word ! Men may carp, and curve, 
and strain words and phrases, and use the sharp 
knife of criticism, guided by a microscope that reveals 
the smallest imaginable fiber of Greek roots and He- 
brew paradyms, until the crack of doom, and the con- 
troversy can never thus be ended. But, all this time, 
there stands the eternal principle, that God is good and 
punishes men in love, as a father his children, that he 
may do them good ; and in the light of that clearly- 
revealed principle, the doctrine of endless hell torments 
can not stand an hour, and mere isolated words are but 
cobwebs. But this " strife about words " can prolong 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 65 



the controversy, if kept up with principles out of sight, 
and that is about the only good that it can do. 

It is conceded that the doctrine of the final " restitu- 
tion of all things " is not announced in the Old Testa- 
ment in the same terms, nor with the same clearness 
that it is in the Xew, and if any man thinks that he can 
gain any advantage from that concession, he should be re- 
minded that the orthodox commentators themselves con- 
cede that the doctrine of endless punishment is not 
taught in the Old Testament at all. The truth is, neither 
Moses nor the prophets knew or pretended to know any- 
thing about the state or condition of the dead, except 
this, that they went to " sheol " which to human vision 
was utterly unseen and unknown. But they did know 
and teach those great principles of the Divine govern- 
ment from which the "restitution of all things" is the 
only legitimate result. That God w^as good, and sought 
to do good ; that His goodness was everlasting, and His 
mercy endured forever, while His wrath was but for a 
moment ; that He pitied those that he punished, even as 
a father pitieth his children ; that He practiced in all 
His ways the principles of justice and equity, and 
reigned supreme over all. These things they taught. 
We need not make quotations, for every man who has 
read the Bible knows that these great principles pervade 
the teachings of all God's prophets since the world be- 
gan ; and we claim that the fact of the Divine goodness, 
and mercy, and justice is the proof of the restitution 
of all things," because the tendency of these attributes 
is conservative, and they work to restore, and not to 
destroy. And although it is true that the old prophets 
did not know, or announce in direct terms, the state or 
condition of the dead, or plainly indicate the particulars 
of destiny; yet they did look forward with joy to the 
5 



66 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



coming of one who should pour light upon the dark- 
ness of u sheol" and reveal the truth of destiny, and 
none of them seem to suspect for a moment that it could 
be anything else but grand and glorious. It is chiefly 
in connection with this Messenger, whom they called 
the Messiah, who would come to restore, and not to de- 
stroy, that they spoke of the " times of the restitution of 
all things." 

We now proceed to the justification of the fact, that 
this doctrine of restitution is taught in the Old Testa- 
ment. Begin with Moses in the Genesis, and we find 
the promise recorded on the threshold of man's career 
upon the earth. "I will put enmity between thee and 
the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall 
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." We do 
not intend to be guilty of the folly we have condemned, 
in straining words and phrases. The books are gener- 
ally agreed, that the seed of the woman, to which allu- 
sion is here made, is Christ, and the indication is, that 
He will crush the head of the serpent, who is none other 
than Satan, the great progenitor of evil. The head of 
the serpent is the vital part, and to bruise, rather crush, 
the head of the serpent, is to destroy him. But the heel 
of man is not the seat of his life, and a bruise upon the 
heel is but a temporary evil, and the doctrine is, that 
while Satan might injure Christ and cause Him to suffer 
slightly for a season, yet ultimately Christ should tri- 
umph and utterly destroy Satan. This is what Ortho- 
doxy itself deduces from this teaching of Moses. We 
think the construction of the passage thus is somewhat 
strained. Eather the seed of the woman is simply her 
posterity, which, of course, includes the whole human 
race. The serpent was no supernatural devil in dis- 
guise, but is used as an emblem or personification of 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 67 



evil; and without criticising words or straining lan- 
guage, we may see revealed here, on the first manifesta- 
tion of evil, the great principle that the good is an 
overmatch for it. Man's heel may be bruised by it, and 
for a season he may suffer from it; but it is not fatal. 
But the head of the serpent shall be crushed. The evil 
is not eternal; but it is doomed to die. And then shall 
come the "jtimes of the restitution of all things," when 
the good shall have triumphed over the evil, and restored 
to the condition that he occupied before the evil entered; 
man, even the entire race, that proceeded from the wo- 
man shall be holy and happy forever. It is not pre- 
tended that this restitution is here announced in as 
many words, but the great principle of the supremacy 
of good and the destruction of all evil is involved in all 
the words used, and the imagery employed; and, hence, 
the "restitution of all things," is even more unmistaka- 
bly taught than it could be taught by the mere force of 
words, which, at best, often change their meaning. If 
Moses had used the phrase "restitution of all things," 
he would have weakened rather than strengthened his 
position ; for men would have quibbled about the mean- 
ing of it, just as they now do about its import when 
used by Peter. But personify evil on the one hand, and 
call it the serpent, and place humanity on the other, and 
call it the seed of the woman; and then let the battle 
begin, and end in the crushing of the head of serpent, 
while the heel only of man is bruised, and the truth of 
the victory of the one and the destruction of the other 
is plain to the mere child through all ages. Thus, then, 
we find the "times of the restitution" indicated on the 
moment that evil was first manifested upon the earth. 

To Abraham God revealed himself, and said: "By 
myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou 



68 THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



hast done this and hast not withheld thy son, thine 
only son; that in blessing I will bless thee, and in mul- 
tiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars in heaven, 
and as the sand which is upon the sea shore ; and thy 
seed shall possess the gates of his enemies, and in thy 
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. 19 Tak- 
ing this promise to Abraham as we find it, and as it 
must have been understood, even by those, who knew 
nothing of Christianity, it is pervaded with the same 
principle to which we have alluded, and points signifi- 
cantly to the times of the ''restitution of all things/' 
The prominent and unmistakable idea is that of a con- 
flict between the ever-increasing seed of the Patriarch 
and his enemies, and this is a temporary conflict, the re- 
sult of which is the triumph of the former, even to the 
possession of the very gates of the strongholds of the 
latter; and the final issue is blessedness to all the na- 
tions of the earth. This promise to Abraham is, in the 
New Testament, identified with the Gospel, and even 
called the Gospel itself; and the blessings here promised 
to all nations, and families, and kindred of the earth, 
includes all the good that comes from the triumph of 
Christ over all, and the subjugation of all things to 
Himself, and of Himself to God, until " God shall be all 
in all." 

But we choose rather to deal with general principles 
than with particular constructions ; and we insist that 
this promise to Abraham bears upon the face of it, and 
conveys to the mind of the superficial observer the idea 
of the complete triumph of the seed of Abraham over 
all enemies; and the coming era of blessedness for all 
the nations of the earth, and that, hence, there is in it 
an indication of the "times of the restitution of all 
things." It were impossible to crowd into a single 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 69 



chapter all or even a tithe of the passages from the 
prophets of old, where this doctrine is recognized, and 
this principle most plainly announced. When David 
repeats over and over again, that the " mercy of the 
Lord endureth forever, and His wrath is but for a mo- 
ment," and Solomon says, "weeping may endure for 
a night, but joy cometh in the morning," they do but 
utter what is the concurrent testimony of all the proph- 
ets, that the reign of evil is short, that the good must 
and will triumph at last, and that, hence, the restitution 
of all things must come. 

We give only a few more instances in which this prin- 
ciple is clearly set forth. In Isaiah xlv: 23, we read as 
follows: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends 
of the earth; for I am G-od, and there is none else. 1 
have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth 
in righteousness and shall not return, that unto me every 
knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear, surely 
shall say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength." 
To say nothing of the remarkable strength and force of 
the words and phrases here employed, nor to insist on 
the rigid exposition of terms, it is evident that if the 
passage means anything, it carries upon the face of it 
the principle of the supremacy of God over all forms 
of evil, and announces the truth, confirmed by the oath 
of Him that can not lie, that He will destroy all evil, 
reduce all rebellion and sin, and establish and confirm 
the reign of universal righteousness and peace. "Every 
knee shall bow to Him, and every tongue shall confess 
that in Him they have righteousness and strength;" 
and thus the restitution of all things shall be complete. 

It has been said above that the prophets did not know 
or profess to know or teach, the exact state or condition 



70 THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



of the dead, and that, hence, they did not and could not 
announce the particulars of man's final destiny. Nev- 
ertheless, they did announce principles that involved 
the triumph of good over evil, and carried those princi- 
ples out so far as to announce the general truth — that 
sin should be finished, transgression should end, and the 
reign of righteousness should be universal. It is also 
true that, although the prophets did not pretend to 
teach what was or what should be the state or condition 
of man after death, so far as any j^articulars are con- 
cerned, and although u sheol" or the state of the dead, w T as 
to them a dark and inscrutible mystery, yet they did 
believe and teach that there was one coming, in whom 
the spirit of wisdom should dwell, and who should re- 
move the vail and reveal to a wondering world the des- 
tiny that awaits them on the other side the Jordan of 
death. What kind of a message they expected from 
him, what was the nature and character of the destiny 
they thought he would announce, and what a vision of 
glory they anticipated to dawn upon the world, when 
the truth of destiny should be revealed, we ma}^ infer 
from the testimony of Isaiah, ch. xxv : 6, 7, 8: " And in 
this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all 
people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the 
lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees 
well refined. And He will destroy in this mountain the 
covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread 
over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory, 
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all 
faces." We do not now press this passage into the ser- 
vice, as containing a positive announcement of the final 
destiny of man, or of his state and condition in the fu- 
ture world ; nor do we say aught of the peculiar force 



THE UNIVERSALIS]*! OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 71 



of the language. Let it be admitted that the "all peo- 
ple " here means somewhat less than the whole race, 
and that the passage is not a direct and positive an- 
nouncement of destiny ; but it is more and better than 
a mere form of words setting forth destiny. And why? 
Simply because it reveals a principle that pervaded all 
the thoughts and feelings of the prophets, and indicates 
their fixed habits of thought in the premises. 

Here are the facts in the case. From the beginning, 
death had been in the w r orld. All men had bowed alike 
before him. "Man dieth, yea, he giveth up the ghost, 
and where is he?" That was the question which 
pressed upon the ages. That question Moses and the 
prophets could not answer, except in saying the dead 
were in " sheol." And what was " sheol ?" It was an un- 
known and unseen underworld that no human eye 
could penetrate. Its scenes were all concealed, and over 
the faces of all nations and people there was a vail so 
thick that they could not penetrate the regions of the 
dead, or know the destiny of the loved and the lost. 
But Isaiah, in common with all the prophets, looked for- 
ward to one who was to come and remove that vail and 
destroy the face of that covering, thus pouring light 
into the darkness of "sheol" and enabling them to look 
into the mystery of death, and behold the destiny that 
was beyond. And what sort of a vision did they ex- 
pect thus to break on the eyes of the world ? That vail 
being removed, what did they expect to see ? A divided 
world ? A sundered race, one-half of them rejoicing in 
heaven, and the other half wailing in the agonies of an 
endless hell? Nothing like it. But when that vail 
should be removed, the prophet expected such a vision 
of glory to break in upon the world that the mere pros- 



72 THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



pect of it should be "to all people a feast of fat things 
full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined." The 
opening of that vision by the removal of the vail that 
intervened between man and destiny, should swallow up 
death in victory, remove his sting, and take the fear of 
him all away ; and by it the tears that had fallen over 
the possible destiny of the loved and the lost, should all 
be wiped away. And so this feast of fat things full of 
marrow, this victory over death, this wiping away the 
tears from all faces, this joy upon the earth, unspeaka- 
ble and full of glory, is not destiny. It is only the an- 
tepast of destiny. It is the mere effect of the removal 
of the vail, and the vision of destiny; and the destiny 
itself is as much better than this as fruition is better 
than hope. 

If the vision of a world of bliss and a world of woe, 
a scattered and broken race hopelessly divided in des- 
tiny — the one part rejoicing in heaven, and the other 
part sinking forever deeper and deeper in hell, and that 
without hope of relief or end to their torments— if a 
vision like this can answer the conditions, make unto 
all people a feast of fat things, swallow up death in vic- 
tory, and wipe away the tears from the eyes of human- 
ity, then it may be that such was the vision that Isaiah 
expected to burst upon the world when Messiah should 
remove the veil, and reveal the state of the dead, and 
in that case he did not testify of the times of the " res- 
titution of all things." But if it may be presumed that 
there is a heart in man, and that there are sympathies 
that make the interests of one the interests of all, so 
that a blessed hope for all that live is necessary to full- 
ness of joy, and the victory of death, and the cessation 
of sorrow and crying, then is the vision of destiny in 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 73 



the future world a glorious vision , and then did the 
prophet testify of the " times of the restitution of all 
things." 

The brief outline that has been given, imperfect as it 
is, will go far to show that the apostle was perfectly 
right when he said that this doctrine of u the restitution 
had been spoken by all God's holy prophets since the 
world began.' ' 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE D NI VERS ALISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

In the Old Testament, TJniversalism is taught rather 
in the recognition of the great principles of which it is 
the legitimate result, than in dogmatic forms and 
phrases. The New Testament builds upon the founda- 
tion of Moses and the prophets, amplifies those princi- 
ples, and more definitely announces the conclusions to 
which they lead. 

The paternity of God is the prominent feature of the 
Gospel. There is no necessity of referring to a multi- 
tude of passages in proof of the fact that the New Tes- 
tament everywhere proclaims God as a Father, and His 
government as paternal. That much all admit, and 
none hesitate to teach their children to pray, saying, 
" Our Father who art in heaven." It is true that some 
of the writers of the Old Testament, in their best moods, 
gave utterance to the idea of the Divine paternity, but 
the pervading idea of God and His government, all 
along through these Scriptures is, that of a Ruler and 
King, powerful, wise and good, it may be, but neverthe- 
less a stern and august Monarch, more to be feared than 
loved, and such the awe of Him that the only title re- 
garded as really descriptive of Him, was the ineffable 
name, Jehovah, which no devout Jew ventured to pro- 
nounce. Even into this day, in the reading of the 
Scriptures in the Jewish synagogues, that name is not 
heard, but as often as it occurs, they read " Adonoi," in- 
stead of Jehovah. 
74 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE NEW TESTxlMENT. 75 



But the moment we come to the New Testament the 
state of the case is entirely changed. The majesty of 
the Great King sitting in the distance, unapproachable 
by man, and whose awful name none may venture to 
utter, is all laid aside, and the Savior speaks of Him 
habitually as the Father, and bids the humblest and the 
highest alike to go to Him in the simplicity and the 
confidence of children, and say, " Our Father who art 
in heaven." If, therefore, God be a Father, His gov- 
ernment is parental, and His dealings with men are 
marked with a Father's love. This is no strained con- 
struction of words, for this great doctrine of the father- 
hood of God meets us everywhere as a prominent fea- 
ture of the Gospel, and pervades it from the beginning 
to the end. Nobody doubts, or can doubt, that it is 
taught in the New Testament. Now, we claim that 
universal blessedness, final holiness and happiness for 
all the race, is the only legitimate or logical conclusion 
from the premises. Once admit that God is a Father, 
and His government parental, and we thus strike out 
from that government everything like vindictiveness or 
retaliation. We make punishment corrective or disci- 
plinary, and, of course, effectually deny that it can be 
endless, and array every attribute of God on the side 
of goodness, and engage them all in the work of de- 
stroying sin and misery, and establishing the reign of 
holiness and happiness. A father may, indeed, subject 
his children to privations and sufferings for a season, 
for their good, and he may punish them temporarily 
that he may do them good. But no father worthy of 
the name, punishes his children to be revenged upon 
them, nor yet for the mere sake of punishing them ; 
nor will any father permit his children to sin and suffer 
eternally, if he can prevent it ; much less will the heav- 



78 THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



enly Father do these things. A father loves his chil- 
dren, all of them. He seeks to do them good, and only 
good, and to the extent of his ability he will labor to 
promote their good and secure it. This is the plain, 
practical, common-sense view of the matter. How con- 
fidingly do children look up to their parents and lean 
upon them, and trust them, and hope for all good from 
them! Consider how wide, how all-pervading and im- 
portant is this parental principle. What a multitude 
of homes there are of which this is the bond ! How 
many parents there are this day, and every day, yearn- 
ing with inexpressible tenderness over their children, 
toiling for them, wrestling w T ith adversity, and wearing 
their lives out for their sakes ! And what an army of 
children there are who, as the night comes on, lay them 
down in the darkness and sweetly sleep, secure in the 
confidence that a mother's sleepless vigilance watches 
over them, and that no evil can befall them while the 
father is near ! Earth has nothing more beautiful than 
this, nor is there in the human race a principle so wide, 
so beneficent, or so ladened with good for man. 

It is, therefore, no light or trivial affair, no meaning- 
less fact, that this principle is carried over into the do- 
main of religion, so that there God is proclaimed as a 
Father, and invested with all the attributes of pater- 
nity. But that single fact is big with tremendous im- 
port. If, indeed, it be true that God is our Father, He 
loves His children ; and if He loves them to-day, the 
time will never come when He will cease to love them, 
and, loving them, He will do them good, and though He 
may chasten them sore, it will be for good ; and thus 
the end of suffering and the final blessedness of the race 
is involved in, and flows from, the fact that God is our 
Father. To the right-minded man, there is no absurd- 



THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 77 

ity more transparent than that which presumes the infi- 
nite Father will abandon any of His creatures to hope- 
less and eternal sin and suffering. 

It has been stated that the doctrine of universal sal- 
vation is more distinctly and plainly announced in the 
New than in the Old Testament, and we call the read- 
er's attention to some of these more positive announce- 
ments. 

1. We are certified directly that this result has in its 
favor the pleasure, the will and the purpose of God. 
The teachings of Christ himself are clear and explicit. 
" The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things 
into His hands." Here is the starting point. All 
power in heaven and earth was given to Christ, and the 
administration of the moral government of men w T as 
committed to Him as its executor. What next? "All 
that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him 
that cometh I w^ill in no w'ise cast out. For I came 
down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will 
of Him that sent me. And this is the Father's will 
which sent me, that of all which He hath given me I 
should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the 
last day." Johnvi: 37-39. 

We offer no criticism on this language to make it 
mean more or less than appears upon the face of it. We 
only direct attention to the points presented. 1. God is 
presented in the character of a Father. It is the 
Father that sent me. 2. The Father has given to 
Christ all things, because He loved Him. 3. Christ 
came to do the will of -the Father. 4. That will of the 
Father is, that He should safely keep and lose nothing 
of all that He had given unto the Son. No straining 
of language, or criticisms upon words are necessary to 
make this teaching plain and unmistakable, that the 



78 THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



will of God is not the destruction or the loss of any, but 
the salvation of every human soul. 

Take, again, the teachings of Paul. u For this is 
good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, 
who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the 
knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one 
Mediator between God and men : the man Christ Jesus, 
who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in 
due time. Whereunto I am ordained a preacher and 
an apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. 
I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not." 1 Tim. ii : 3-7. 

Three things are worthy of note as being plain and 
easily understood from this quotation. 1. The will of 
God is that all men shall be saved. 2. This truth is 
founded upon the fact that there is one God and one 
Mediator, who gave Himself for all men, which He 
would not have done if it had not been God's will to 
save them. 3. This doctrine, instead of being a mere 
fragment or incident in the Gospel system, was in fact 
the great truth whereunto Paul was ordained a preacher 
and an apostle ; and lest any one might doubt this last 
statement, of his being ordained to this end, he adds : 
" I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not." We turn a d.eaf 
ear to the long and labored criticisms that creed-makers 
have offered in an attempt to make it appear that there is a 
" will of desire " and a " will of purpose," and that the will 
of God that all men shall be saved is no more than the 
"will of desire," indicating merely that God would like to 
have it so, but by no means that He purposes it shall 
be so. All this is sheer quibbling. What the apostle 
says is, that God will have it so, and our translation is 
no more positive than the original. The best comment 
we can give upon this passage, as decisive of the idea 
attached to the will of God, is in the language of the 



THE UNIVERSALIS^! OP THE NEW TESTAMENT. 79 



apostle himself : " He hath abounded unto us in all 
wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the 
mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, 
which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the dispen- 
sation of the fullness of times He might gather together 
in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven 
and which are on earth, even in Him ; in whom we also 
have an inheritance, being predestinated according to 
the purpose of Him who maketh all things after the 
counsel of His own will." We offer no criticisms, but 
call the reader's attention to the statement as it is. 1. 
The thing to be accomplished is not the destruction or 
sundering of the universe, but it is the gathering of all 
things together, embracing those in heaven and those 
on the earth. 2. God has made known His will to do 
this. 3. That will is no mere desire to have it so, but 
it accords with His "good pleasure" which he hath 
purposed in Himself. 4. God worketh all things after 
the counsel of His own will. The doctrine of the sal- 
vation of all men in Christ Jesus, has, therefore, in its 
favor the good pleasure, the will and purpose of God; 
and by all the authority we have for believing that 
God's pleasure will be done, that His settled and eternal 
purpose will stand, or His supreme will be accomplished ; 
by all that authority we are authorized to believe and 
hold fast that doctrine. 

2. There is another class of passages in which this 
doctrine is taught, and we must deal with classes rather 
than with mere isolated passages. It is a class in which 
the good and evil are set forth antithetically, or in con- 
trast, thus being, as it were, laid over against each other 
in a balance, and the preponderance of the good always 
asserted. Of this class the following are specimens : 
"But where sin abounded grace did much more abound, 



80 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might 
grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Eom. v : 20, 21. Here we have 
the admission, on the one side, that " sin abounded/' 
and over against it is laid the truth that " grace did 
much more abound." Then, again, we have the reign 
of sin, and that reign bounded by death, and never go- 
ing beyond it, on one side, and on the other, grace 
reigning through righteousness unto eternal life. There 
are a large number of passages of this sort, and we can 
only give a few. 

"But not as the offense so is the free gift. For if 
through the offense of one many be dead, much more 
the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one 
man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And 
not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift, for the 
judgment was by one unto condemnation; but the free 
gift is of many offenses unto justification. For, if by 
one man's offense, death reigned by one, much more 
they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift 
of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. 
Therefore, as by the offense of one, judgment came upon 
all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness 
of the one, the free gift came upon all men unto justifi- 
cation of life." What we have to notice is not a word 
or phrase, nor the construction of a w T ord, but the higher 
and more important fact of a fixed principle which runs 
through the argument, and without which there is no 
meaning at all in the whole quotation. The antithesis 
is destroyed without it. On the one hand are the offense, 
the sin, the judgment, and the condemnation and the 
death; on the other are the free gift, the righteousness, 
the justification and the eternal life; and the principle 
which runs through the whole process of the argument 



THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 81 



is, that these last are. co-extensive with, and super a- 
bounding over, the first. The offense, the sin, the judg- 
ment, the condemnation and the death are, indeed, uni- 
versal, passing upon all men, for all have sinned; but 
they are temporary phenomena, existing only for a time. 
Beyond these, and co-extensive with them, and abound- 
ing over them, is God's "free gift," consisting of "grace, 
righteousness, justification and life;" and the latter 
abound much more than the former. So plain and 
palpable is this principle, that Dr. Adam Clarke, the 
Methodist Commentator, saw and acknowledged it, as 
follows : 

••As sin (whether original or actual) hath reigned 
unto death (temporal of the body, spiritual of the soul 
and eternal of both), even so, as deeply, as universally, 
as extensively, shall grace reign through righteousness 
unto eternal life." And he closes in rapture : "Halli- 
lujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! Hell 
is disappointed, the devil confounded, and sin totally 
destroyed ! " 

We will not pretend to say, precisely, what this good 
Methodist man meant by this language. But it is plain 
as the sun at noonday, that, for the time being, at least, 
he saw plainly enough the force of the antithesis, and 
recognized the principle that pervades it, namely, the 
superabundance of grace and life over sin and death; 
and the result of this principle, in the complete triumph 
of the former over the latter. It is nothing to us if, in 
other parts of his writings, this same author advo- 
cates the eternity of death and sin, and condemnation. 
Enough it is for us, that when he had his eye on these 
teachings of the Apostle, he saw their unmistakable im- 
port, and acknowledged the triumph of grace, in the 
total destruction of sin and death. If he was inconsist- 
6 



82 THE UNIVERSAL ISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



ent with himself, that is his business and not ours ; sure 
we are that in this instance he gave the true mind of 
the apostle. 

The same antithetical method occurs in the fifteenth 
chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, in which 
the reference to the resurrection of the dead is unques- 
tionable. "For, since by man came death, by man came 
also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam ail 
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Here 
we have on the one hand, the first man, Adam, of the 
earth, earthly, and by him came sin and death; and on 
the other, the second man, Christ, the Lord from Heaven, 
and by Him came the resurrection and the life; and the 
principle is, that these are co-extensive, and the life tri- 
umphant. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall be made alive." The difference being not in ex- 
tent, but in the order of time. The making* alive is after 
the death, and is, of course, the annihilation of it. 

In regard to the state and condition of those who are 
raised from the dead, w T e find the same method of con- 
trast pursued. "So, also, is the resurrection of the dead. 
It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it 
} is sow T n in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in 
weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural 
body, it is raised a spiritual body." All can see how 
perfect the antithesis, and how completely the remedy 
is adapted to the evil in every instance. Every con- 
ceivable cause of sin and suffering are radically ranged 
on one side. Corruption, dishonor, weakness, and all 
the infirmities of the natural body; these are the portion 
of man upon the earth, and if, besides these, there is any 
conceivable cause of sin or suffering, we know not what 
that cause is. Over against these, as triumphing over 
them and succeeding them, we have incorruption, and 



THE UNI VERBALISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 83 



glory, and power, and a spiritual body; and these last 
are reserved for all that partook of the former and died 
in Adam. "For, as we have borne the image of the 
earthly, w r e shall also bear the image of the Heavenly." 
The antithesis is complete again. As many as have 
borne the image of the earthly, shall bear the image of 
the Heavenly; and one of these facts is as certain as 
the other. The apostle then speaks of the resurrection 
of the dead, which shall be accomplished in a moment, 
in the twinkling of an eye, when the dead shall be 
raised incorruptible; and we shall be changed. "For 
this mortal must put on immortality, and this corrupti- 
ble must put on incorruption. So when this corruptible 
shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall 
have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass 
the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in vic- 
tory. O! death where is thy sting? O! grave where 
is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, but thanks 
be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ." 

In a preceding chapter the prophet Isaiah was intro- 
duced as being himself ignorant of the state and condi- 
tion of the dead, but trusting that one should come who 
should remove the vail that was cast over all people, 
swallow up death in victory, and wipe away tears 
from all faces. The doctrine of the apostle is, that this 
prophesy is fulfilled in Christ ; and looking forward to the 
dead, even all who died in Adam, as raised in the heav- 
enly image, incorruptible, immortal and glorious, he 
quotes the language, "death is swallowed up in vic- 
tory," and thanks God for the victory thus given through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus grand and glorious is the 
consummation to which faith points the believing soul. 
And here the vision endeth. What lies beyond is not 



84 THE UNIVERSALIS*! OF THE NEW TEST ANIENT. 



given man to know. It is not probable, however, that 
humanity thus redeemed from death, and clothed with 
life and immortality will remain in perpetual statu quo; 
but it is probable that its course will be still onward and 
upward, approximating more and more to the Divinity, 
and changing ever from glory to glory as the ages of 
eternity pass, but never end. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS 31. 

We are shrewd and calculating people, having an eye 
always to the account of profit and loss. The masses of 
our people are devoted to policy rather than principle. 
They are not ready to follow the truth for its own sake, 
or embrace it at all hazards. On the contrary, they want 
the policy of the matter explained. They are anxious 
to know what they shall gain by embracing a doctrine, 
even if it be true, and if it can be shown that they will 
be large gainers they are ready to embrace it, but not 
otherwise. Hence, they raise the question of the utility 
of Universalism, and ask, What good is expected to re- 
sult from faith in it? This question we propose to an- 
swer in this chapter. 

We do not much like the idea of arguing the question 
on this basis of policy. We prefer always to place the 
whole matter of religion on the higher and holier ground 
of principle and duty ; but since the question of gain or 
loss is so often asked we will, for this once, consider the 
subject in that light. We must, however, firmly protest 
against the common mode of reasoning upon this subject, 
and rest the policy and the expediency of Universalism 
as we do that of Christianity, with which it is synony- 
mous, solely on the basis of its own intrinsic excellency 
and value, and not upon any extraneous rewards that 
it offers. We want no man to embrace Universalism 

85 



86 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS*!. 



for any other reason than a conviction of its substantial 
truth and real worth in and of itself. If we could per- 
suade every reader to become a nominal Universal! st, by 
offering a bonus or by threatening a punishment, we 
would neither offer the one nor threaten the other; for 
we should know that the change would be made mere- 
ly from policy and not from principle, and we would 
not give a straw for a regiment of converts on that 
ground. Eeligion is no coup d'etat, to secure a great 
prize in another world, or to escape a great calamity 
there. It is not a method of salvation in another world, 
but it is salvation here; and it is to be sought in the love 
of it, and for what it is in itself, now and ever. If a man 
goes a journey he usually takes his baggage, not because 
he wants it on the way, but because he expects to want 
it when he arrives at his place of destination. So many 
a man embraces religion, and gives himself a great deal 
of trouble to carry it, or the appearance of it, as a heavy 
burden all through the journey of life, not because he 
wants it here, but because he thinks he shall want it in 
the future world, as a sort of "open sesame," to gain 
him admittance to paradise. Not so the truly religious 
man. To him the Gospel of the Blessed God is "the 
cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night;" it is the 
"manna from heaven," the cool water from the rock, 
which he needs every day, to guide and to strengthen 
him, in the weary journey through the wildei'ness; and 
he embraces it, and loves it, and holds it fast for what 
it is, now and every day of his life. He may be as- 
sured that it hath nothing to do with securing heaven 
or escaping hell in eternity, and he will love it not the 
less, for he knows that it is heaven here, and that it has 
already redeemed him from many a hell in this world. 
We shall be best understood, perhaps, by bringing into 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS^. 



87 



notice the common doctrines of the day, and the grounds 
on which their mission for good is predicated. 

The starting point is in the supposition that man is, 
by nature, a depraved and sinful creature. He has 
broken the law of God, and its penalty, which is no less 
than endless misery in hell, is impending; and of it we 
are in danger from the day of our birth to the day of 
our death. Eeligion jn'offers us the only means of es- 
caping from that dreadful doom; the only method by 
which we can secure an /eternity of bliss. Hence, the 
cry always is, that eternal consequences are at stake. 
All that is glorious in heaven, and all that is dark and 
dismal in hell, are suspended on the issue; and in a few 
words, it may be said, we must embrace religion, be- 
cause there is a hell to shun and a heaven to gain or 
lose. The danger is imminent, the peril is great, and, 
hence, there should be no delay; but now, and at once, 
the choice should be made before it is eternally too late. 

Universalism ignores this danger and this glittering 
prize; the one appealing to fear and the other to cupid- 
ity, and makes the whole thing a matter of principle. 
The claim of what is called orthodoxy, for superior 
power for good, rests solely on the fact that it threatens 
an endless hell as a punishment, and promising heaven 
as a reward, and thus makes the good policy of em- 
bracing religion the more apparent. Against such a 
view of the nature and the mission of divine religion 
we protest always, as injurious to man and dishonorable 
to God. We can not, for a moment, consent to think so 
meanly of the Savior, as to consider Him one whose 
chief business it is to interfere with the balance of eter- 
nal justice, and prevent the due execution of the law of 
God; nor can we think so unworthily of His Divine 
"Religion, as to consent in thought, word, or deed, to the 



88 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS*!. 



idea that it is a mere stroke of policy, whereby to gain 
a rich prize, or an expedient to cheat justice of its dues. 
It makes religion unworthy of an honorable mind, robs 
it of its intrinsic value, and makes it depend upon ex- 
traneous things for all its real worth. "We are plainly 
taught, by the Savior, that the whole sum and substance 
of true religion is embraced in love to God and man; 
and if so, it is manifest that such views must be power- 
less in a truly religious aspect. Suppose a man fasts, 
or prays, or repents, or performs any round of duties, 
because he is afraid of hell if he does not perform them, 
or, because he hopes to gain heaven by their perform- 
ance, does he, therefore, love God or his neighbor the 
better? Or is there one particle of merit in what he 
thus does from the mere promptings of policy? .Cupid- 
ity and the instinct of self-preservation are brought 
into play; but the heart is thus untouched. Only what 
one does from the love of God and man, is, in the eye of 
Christianity, worthy to be named in the category of 
things that the Master requires. It is sad to think how 
this religion of policy, this "eye service, and hand seiv 
vice," this serving God for the lust of a future reward 
in heaven, and the fear of a dreadful punishment in hell, 
has usurped the place of the religion of love; and how 
little of the true spirit of the Master is left in the reli- 
gion that passes under His name? From day to day, 
and times without number, ministers and laymen alike, 
use language like the following: "What is the use of 
religion if Universalism is true? If all men are to be 
saved, at last, why preach or pray? What good can 
come of a religion that ignores hell and the devil? If 
we believed that there was no burning hell in another 
world we would not serve God, or trouble ourselves 
about religion in any form." These things come in no 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS^!. 



89 



questionable manner, so often, that one is well nigh 
forced to the conclusion that almost the last vestige of 
love for God and His Divine Eeligion is obliterated from 
the human mind, and that men have come to be reli- 
gious only from the fear of punishment and the hope 
of reward. But we can not consent to think so meanly 
of the religion of Christ as to admit that, of itself and 
by itself, it is of so little worth that it would die out of 
the world, and lose all hold upon men, but for the fact 
that there is a devil and a hell to frighten men to its 
embrace. Such views of religion are not only destitute 
of moral power, to lead men to the love of God and 
man, which is the sole end and aim of the Gospel, but 
they are positively pernicious in their moral influence. 

Men who are habitually moved, as beasts are moved, 
by their instincts, their propensities and their fears, 
must inevitably fall instead of rising in the moral scale. 
Men whose cupidity and whose fears are constantly ap- 
pealed to, and to whom the claims of religion are ever 
presented in the name of policy and not of principle, 
soon become oblivious of moral distinctions. Of this, the 
very fact that the masses of Christians now wonder 
what good can come from a religion without a hell, is 
the proof. Men who know the love of God and man, 
and who have any tolerable idea that principle and duty 
are higher than cupidity and fear, would never ask such 
a question, or harbor such a thought. The fact that 
such thoughts are harbored, is fearful proof of the per- 
nicious influence of modern theological dogmas, in hard- 
ening the heart and rendering men blind to principle, 
and devotees alone of policy. If we go to a plantation 
of one or two hundred slaves, who are under the control 
of an overseer, we may see the principle illustrated. 
There is no need of saying that the said overseer seeks 



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THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALISM. 



to govern them, in the main, by appealing to their in- 
stincts and their fears; nor is it necessary to charge him 
with any atrocious cruelties in the premises. Enough 
it is that he is there to look after the interests of his 
employer, and to see that the labor is performed ; and 
he depends mainly upon the fears of the slaves to gov- 
ern them. The question is, what is the moral effect of 
this system of training? Do those slaves, thus governed, 
become tender of conscience and sensitive of duty? Do 
they learn to ignore policy and adhere steadfastly to 
principle? Can that be called a good school of morals? 
The poor fellows wonder what there is to keep a white 
man, w T ho has no overseer, at work. If they thought 
the overseer would not punish him, and the master 
would give him a good dinner, would they toil all day 
in the field, under a broiling sun? By no means. But 
they would " lay down the shovel and the hoe " as quickly 
as your modern professor would doff his religion, if he 
were not afraid of hell and the devil. The truth is, they 
have both been educated in the same school, and they 
are alike slaves, the one to an ungracious man, and the 
other to an angry God* and which of the twain is most 
to be pitied is, perhaps, doubtful. Neither of them 
knows the binding obligation of principle and duty; 
neither of them knows what it is to be free, or to serve 
God for the love of Him. 

If any one desires to know what good Universal ism 
can do to men thus bound in the bondage of fear, and 
subjected to the hardening process of being moved by 
their fears, and ignorant of the liberty that is in Christ, 
it is precisely in this direction that he can see it. It 
delivers from this bondage of fear, and introduces men 
into the " glorious liberty of the children of God." 
And this it does by substituting the law of love for the 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS*!. 



91 



law of fear. It introduces higher and holier motives 
into the soul, and subjects man to the gentler influences 
of the love of God and man. It starts out with the po- 
sition that God loves us, and concludes that we must 
love Him because He first loved us. Instead of pre- 
senting religion as an expedient to avoid hell and gain 
heaven, it makes it the tie that unites the soul in love 
to God and man ; to be loved and cherished for its own 
sake. Its first, and last, and highest appeal is to the 
heart. It drives not by the terrors of the slave, but 
"wins by the voice of love and kindness. It ignores en- 
tirely the perils of an endless hell, and the dangers to 
which man is naturally exposed by the will of God, and 
makes the Infinite One the friend and father, whose 
arms of everlasting mercy encircle us from the cradle 
to the grave, and whose faithfulness stretches onward 
through all the boundless future, and can never leave 
nor forsake us. It tells us that His call to us ever is, 
"My son, give me thy heart," and assures us that our 
best and highest good is this day, and every other day, 
to be found in the love of God and man. It moves 
away the curtain that intervenes between time and 
eternity, and presents to our hopes a world " where the 
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest," 
and assures us that such is the inheritance our blessed 
Father hath bequeathed to us. Thus man is called upon 
to love his God, and religion comes to him as his guide 
in the way of truth and duty, inviting him to that wis- 
dom " whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all 
whose paths are peace." It offers itself as man's best 
comforter, his strength in weakness, his companion 
through all the toils of life, whispering encouragement 
in trial and temptation, and hovering over the dy- 



92 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALISM. 



ing bed and placing in his hand a staff on which to lean 
when heart and flesh shall fail, lingering around the 
graves of the loved and the lost and wiping away the 
tears that fall over the possible destiny of the departed. 
It thus gives us something to adore and love, and places 
ns under the dominion of the law of love, which is liberty, 
and delivers us from the bondage of fear, which hath 
torment. If we compare the rule of a kind father who 
appeals to the love of his children, with that of a hard 
master who governs his slaves with the lash, as to their 
moral influence, we shall have a fair illustration of the 
superiority of Universalism over those creeds that 
gender to bondage. 

Further, and theoretically, let us consider the good 
that comes from Universalism in the mere position in 
which it places a man, and the influence it exerts on 
human hopes and human destiny. " As a man think- 
eth in his heart so is he." The position that a man oc- 
cupies, and the destiny that he thinks awaits him, is to 
him real. If a man thinks he is made but to die, and 
death is the end of him, to him, and to all intents and 
purposes, so far as his present happiness is concerned, 
it might as well be so. So, if a man really thinks he is 
standing on the brink of hell, no matter what the 
fact may be, or what others may think, to him it is 
real, and so far as his present feelings are concerned, it 
might as well be true as otherwise. 

Universalism changes the very position that men oc- 
cupy, and the destiny that awaits them, in their own 
thoughts. If we lay aside the teachings of religion, 
what are we? Godless things of earth. Ushered into 
being, we know not how or for what purpose ; children 
of chance, or of the operation of tKe blind laws of mat- 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS^!. 



93 



ter ; destined to live a few fleeting days and nights upon 
the earth, and then die as dies the falling leaf or fading- 
flower, and live no more while the ages shall roll away. 
Such is man without the teachings of religion. To-day 
he is here; but to-morrow, where is he? He is gone. 
But where? ]N"one can answer save with this one voice, 
the dark grave has closed over him. The worms have 
eaten him, and as to his future, all is darkness and mys- 
tery, without a ray of light. Or, if we take that view 
of religion which passes in this day for " evangelical 
Christianity," our condition and prospects are not much 
improved. What do we see ourselves in that aspect, 
and what are our prospects and hopes? Worms of 
earth, created indeed of God, but fallen and depraved 
by the fall of one who lived six thousand years before 
we wjdre born, and thence launched on life's uncertain 
sea, with the heavens dark and stormy, and the waves 
boisterous, and the issue of the perilous voyage uncer- 
tain. Yonder is heaven, but the winds are adverse ; 
and yonder, also, is the gulf of ruin, and the breezes 
bear us full in that direction. A chance there is for us, 
but it is only a chance, and the odds are against us that 
our future will be one of endless woe. Well may we 
sing with the poet : 

"On slippery rocks I see them stand 
And fiery billows roll below/' 

To the man thus in peril every hour, and who sees him- 
self suspended, as it were, between heaven and hell ; or 
who, if he has persuaded himself of his own safety, 
sees those that he loves thus " hair hung and breeze sha- 
ken," there is a boon that comes in Universalism which 
is worth more than all the mines of earth. It presents 



94 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALISM. 



religion to him as the tower of his hope, and the rock 
of his defense, bidding him be strong and fear not. It 
offers him a God of all glory, and perfection, and good- 
ness, instead of one who is an enemy, or careless of his 
welfare, and bids him lean his aching head upon the 
strong arm of the Infinite, and rest secure in the confi- 
dence that no harm shall befall him while God is near. 
It places him in a world enlightened by the smiles of 
Infinite love, all whose vicissitudes are guided by uner- 
ring wisdom, and tending surely to the promotion of 
the best interests of our race. It bends the bow of 
promise in every cloud that lowers upon the skies of 
earth, and lights up the darkness even of the night of 
death with the dawn of an immortal day, of which God 
Himself is the sun and the light, and bids us see our 
portion there. Thus it causeth "old things to pass 
away, and all things to become new," and verily to the 
soul thus enlightened there is a " new heaven and a 
new earth." And is it still asked, what good it can do 
to embrace and practice a religion like this? Behold 
the good in the thing itself; not in the fact that it prom- 
ises to deliver from a future hell, or to bestow a future 
reward, but in the higher and better fact, that it has 
delivered from a hell of uncertainty, doubt and fear, 
and that it is in itself the pearl of great price. Not in 
the fact that it is the means of salvation in the future, 
but in the better fact that it is salvation in the pres- 
ent. Not in the fact that it guarantees peace in the fu- 
ture, but in the more glorious fact that it is peace, yea, 
peace with God — the peace that passeth under- 
standing. 

iSTor can we agree with that view of religion which 
makes its chief utility to consist in preparing men to 



TIIE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALIS}!. 



95 



die, and to meet the grand assize that is to come after 
death. Bather is it the more valuable as the best prep- 
aration for the best, the truest and the happiest life. 
He only is prepared to live as man should live, who has 
been taught of God, and has learned to love Him with 
all his heart, and his neighbor as himself. When men 
thus learn to regard religion for its own sake, they will 
seek it earnestly, and there will be no more need of the 
seething cauldron of hell to drive others to its embrace. 
It must be looked upon as a surpassing excellence which 
constitutes at once the glory and perfection of our be- 
ing; that state of the soul which feels in all its depths 
the beating pulse of a healthful and vigorous spiritual 
life. Men must be brought to see it as an end, and not 
a means of climbing up to some other end. They must 
learn that it is a present, and not merely a prospective 
good; that it is better than fame or glory, and more 
conducive to their happiness than wealth or earthly 
goods. In it all real interests are subserved, and pres- 
ent happiness secured, as it can be secured in no other 
way. When men come thus to regard religion, they 
will no more stand and parley about the profit and loss, 
nor will they doubt as to the place where it can be 
found. Praying, as all good and true souls do, for the 
salvation of all men, they will see that the doctrine that 
proclaims it is able to do them good, and capable of 
meeting the wants of their souls, and they will em- 
brace it and hold it fast for its own sake. To the af- 
flicted and bereaved, whose loved ones have fallen amid 
the carnage of battle, it is the only sure foundation of 
hope, the only fountain of comfort. What is a faith 
which suspends salvation upon certain conditions, and 
leaves them with a moral certainty that those over 



96 



THE UTILITY OF UNIVERSALISM. 



whose departure they mourn, have not complied with 
those conditions? "What they want, and what they 
must have, before they can be comforted, is the assu- 
rance that God saves not by exceptions and expedients, 
but by rules and principles that never change, so that 
in the hands of the ever-loving and ever-blessing Father 
the interests of one and all are alike safe, yesterday, to- 
day, and forever. 



THE 



PHILOSOPHY OF 0N1YERSAUSM, 



OR. 



REASONS FOK OI K FAITH. 



uv 

Rev. I D WILLIAMSON. D. i). 



C1NCI N N A T L : 
WILL! AM SOX ,v CWTWELL 

STAR IN THE WEST uFKK'K. 

1 8 h i; . 



THE STAR IN THE WEST, 



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